If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito. ~Betty Reese

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Perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes numbers can be equally as powerful. I am still thinking about those 120,000 people that might live if we can get the U.S. healthcare system to test the 800,000 Baby Boomers who might slip through the cracks if we only did risk-based hepatitis C screening.

Here are some more numbers:

  • In the U.S., 3.25% of people born 1945-1965 have #hep C.
  • Let me put it another way: 1 in 30 people born from 1945 through 1965 has hepatitis C.
  • Hepatitis C causes more deaths in the U.S. than HIV does--15,000 people die every year from hepatitis C.
  • Every day in the US, 41 people die from hepatitis C.
  • Experts estimate that hepatitis C will cause one million cases of cirrhosis by 2020.
  • Hepatitis C is the #1 reason for liver transplantation.
  • The majority of those with hepatitis C do not know they have it.

Here is big number--ONE--that represents you. You can make a huge difference if you reach as many Baby Boomers as you can, and let them know that the CDC recommends hepatitis C testing for everyone born from 1945 through 1965.

Talk to a Baby Boomer.

And then talk to another one.

It all adds up.