Prevention of Hepatitis C Virus in Injecting Drug Users: A Narrow Window of Opportunity

and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections remain major public health problems among injecting drug users (IDUs). In 2007, it was estimated that there were 15.9 million IDUs worldwide, with 3 million living with HIV [1]. While similar data are not available for HCV, given an HCV prevalence of 65 % [2], it is estimated that 10 million active IDUs have been exposed to HCV and 8 mil-lion have chronic infection. The global burden of HCV is even greater in former IDUs. Implementation of harm reduction strategies since the early 1990s among