Written for Mediaplanet’s campaign on infectious diseases and liver illness.
Published online and in print inside the National Post on September 17, 2015.
Sharon Rider was first diagnosed with hepatitis C when she was 39 years old – more than two decades after she had been infected.
“I didn’t have any clue at all that I was carrying a virus,” she says.
In Canada, an estimated 250,000 people have hepatitis C, a virus that attacks the liver and is transmitted through contact with infected blood. Many patients, like Rider, may be infected for years but show no signs of the disease.
Ishani Nath 