The Kaiser Permanente Hawaii Viral Hepatitis Clinic reached a milestone by curing its 1,000th patient of hepatitis C.

“It’s a very satisfying thing to make that call and tell someone they’re cured,” Dr. Rashmi Baragi, MD, director of the viral hepatitis clinic, said in a news release. “You can prevent so much damage to a patient from this infection.”

Despite the availability of drugs that can cure 95% of hepatitis C cases, two in three insured individuals with hepatitis C in the U.S. remain untreated within a year of diagnosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Hawaiʻi has one of the highest rates of liver cancer in the United States, and the leading causes are viral hepatitis,” said Thaddeus Pham, viral hepatitis prevention coordinator at the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health. “Given the impact of viral hepatitis on our local communities, we partner with health care organizations and community-based agencies across the state to enhance access to hepatitis services, including testing, immunizations, care coordination, and treatment.”

In the decades since Kaiser Permanente Hawaii started the viral hepatitis clinic, Hawaii Permanente Medical Group physicians Tarquin Collis, the chief of Infectious Disease, and Katie Kingsley, an Internal Medicine hospitalist at the clinic, have joined forces with local organizations such as Hep Free Hawaii, a coalition of providers and public health leaders working together to eliminate hepatitis in the islands.

“It has been remarkable to watch a disease go from something that we didn’t understand very well, and we had terrible treatments for, to a disease that we can largely eradicate without much drama,” Collis said.

When Collis joined HPMG in 2001, he saw an opportunity to leverage resources to fight hepatitis C. The clinic was founded in 2004 with a modest budget and quickly doubled cure rates of patients within Kaiser Permanente Hawaii.

The approval of direct-acting medications such as Harvoni in late 2014 revolutionized hepatitis C treatment, increasing cure rates to 95 to 98% with minimal side effects.

An estimated 2 million adults in the U.S. have chronic hepatitis C, with new infections on the rise. Many patients are unaware they have the virus, as it often remains asymptomatic. Kaiser Permanente’s universal hepatitis C antibody screening and reflexive testing have accelerated the pathway for members to be cured.

Honolulu resident Paul Lance, one of the clinic’s early patients, was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1986. After undergoing 11 months of treatment, Lance was cured.

“I consider myself very lucky that it worked,” Lance said. “The viral hepatitis clinic is helping so many people, and I’m very, very grateful to them.”

Another Honolulu resident, who chose to keep her name confidential, was celebrated as the 1,000th patient cured.

According to the health care provider, the patient discovered she had hepatitis C during routine blood work at one of her appointments and was referred to the Kaiser Permanente Hawaii Viral Hepatitis Clinic.

Despite her initial concerns – the patient mentioned how being diagnosed with Hepatitis C can come with a stigma – she looks back positively on her experience. Today, she has also changed her lifestyle.

“One thousand patients — it feels like both a big number and a small number at the same time,” Collis said. “To me, it feels like a thousand stories and a thousand lives whose trajectories have been transformed for the better. That’s a wonderful feeling and an incredible story to tell.”