Sir, – I appreciate the raising of awareness of the burden of disease and issues accessing healthcare among homeless people in Ireland in your editorial on August 28th. In particular, the high prevalence of hepatitis C among homeless people was highlighted. What was not mentioned was that hepatitis C infection in Ireland is almost exclusively associated with illicit intravenous drug use. This is not a controversial statement and has been known for many years among healthcare professional and social workers.
I have no desire to stigmatise homeless people but any interventions regarding the “myriad health and social risk factors” have to focus on drug treatment to have any meaningful impact on the problems your editorial highlighted. – Yours, etc,
DONAL B O’CONNOR,
Harold’s Cross,
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Dublin 6W.