At a time when the world is grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, the Nobel Prize Committee has recognized the efforts of the trio, but for whom the battle against another lethal virus, Hepatitis C would have been a lost one. Dr Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice have been chosen for 2020’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough that made blood transfusion safer for everyone and also paving the way for formulation of effective medicines that have saved millions of lives by now. With the highest award finally coming, extensive research that spanned more than four decades has finally received the honour that was long due.

Although there are many strains of Hepatitis virus that cause ruin of the liver in various degrees, Hepatitis C which is typically transmitted through shared or reused needles and syringes, infected blood transfusions etc. is the most lethal among the lot as the spread of infection is almost silent without manifestation of any telling symptoms. But once it manages an infiltration in the blood system, the pathogen, in most cases, silently erodes the liver and it’s only after years or decades later the severity i.e acute liver inflammation or cancer gets detected, leading to death. The WHO figures are alarming indeed as nearly 71 million people across the world, of which 6 to11 million are unfortunately in India have chronic Hepatitis C infection and in 2016 alone, the virus caused nearly 400,000 global deaths. It’s not without reasons why the Nobel Prize website has observed that the discovery of Hepatitis C virus was “one of the important milestones in improvement in public health that had raised hopes for eliminating the disease.” Prior to its discovery for which this year’s Nobel Prize has been awarded to the trio, all critical liver diseases were attributed to the A, B and E strains alone that hardly led to any effective treatment. And it’s only after the C strain's discovery, a great medical mystery that baffled physicians and researchers for years was finally solved leading to availability of effective antiviral drugs and more significantly, devising of safe test methodologies that identify blood that has the lethal Hepatitis C virus, thus saving millions of patients from being transfused with infected blood samples. This is a major breakthrough in combating the virus as, thanks to this screening technology, post-transfusion hepatitis rates are down to near zero in many parts of the world.

Even if the ultimate panacea for Hepatitis C which is the vaccine is still elusive, but whenever it will come, thanks should also be due to these three researchers for their path-breaking illumination on the ‘basics’.