Pills instead of murders

For the sake of a loved one, you can go to a lot. Especially if his life is in danger. But is it necessary to take the same desperate step?

On the video service, Start was released by the series "Storm" from director Boris Khlebnikov. Two years ago, Khlebnikov and screenwriter Natalia Meshchaninova released the sensational film about the work of the arrhythmia doctors. The tape has collected all the main domestic film awards. The new work of Khlebnikov and Meshchaninova “Storm” is an eight-part action-packed movie about two policeman friends.

“Such things” the new series interested not so much an exciting detective plot as the medical part of the story. According to the plot, Yuri Osokin (Maxim Lagashkin) and Sergey Gradov (Alexander Robak) try to remain honest and decent police, despite the pressure of the authorities, corrupt officials and unclean businessmen's hands. The first leads the slaughter department, the second - the corruption department. But Gradov fell ill with his wife (Anna Mikhalkova). She has a severe form of hepatitis C. The doctor in a local hospital claims that only an operation abroad and a million euros can save a woman, and a couple of millions of rubles will also be needed for his assistance. And an honest cop goes to the dark side. He resoundedly builds many-way schemes to find money and at the same time get out of a friend's suspicion.

Frame from the series "Storm" Photo: provided by the video service Start

Is it really possible to get modern treatment for viral hepatitis only by going literally on the heads? Is everything so scary with therapy? “TD” discussed these issues with Nikita Kovalenko, chairman of the board of the public organization “Together against hepatitis”, watching several series of “Storm” on the eve of the official premiere.

What is hepatitis?

This is inflammation of the liver caused mainly by viral infection. There are five basic hepatitis viruses called the types A, B, C, D and E. Types B and C more often than others become the cause of the development of chronic diseases, and in the most severe cases - cirrhosis and liver cancer. In the most severe cases, the patient needs a liver transplant.
As a rule, bright symptoms of infection manifest only in the later stages of the disease.

- Your first reaction to what you saw in the first episodes of the “storm” about hepatitis was very sharp: “nonsense, madness”. But then you said that it is shown exactly what people with viral hepatitis in Russia are still regularly encountered. Why is this happening?

Nikita Kovalenko Photo: From Personal Archive

- People still do not know that hepatitis C is treated. Moreover, in Russia. And this treatment can be obtained at the expense of the compulsory medical insurance program (compulsory medical insurance). People recognize the diagnosis, get lost, scared, rush into some commercial clinics, fall on the bait to incompetent or dishonest doctors, or even gums-witchcrafts. They can be sent for distant lands and rip off the last money. Which is exactly what happens in the series.

I know a woman who sold an apartment to purchase some miraculous therapy and cure hepatitis C. As a result, she was left without housing and with a disease. Although it was enough to contact normal doctors. In each region there is a medical institution that is engaged in hepatitis. Infectious hospital or AIDS Center. There are patients of patients, there are infectious disease specialists, examinations are carried out, and modern progressive therapy can be obtained. The most effective drugs of direct antiviral action (PPPD) are, they allow you to cure the infection in 95% of cases. In Russia, all these drugs are registered. They can be obtained by compulsory medical insurance.

But we regularly encounter people who have known their diagnosis for many years, live and believe that there is no treatment, as they were told once. Or treatment is so difficult that it is better to live with the virus.

- In the series, the heroine was so intimidated by therapy that she is ready to refuse treatment. She is sick, her hair falls out, she thinks about suicide. Treatment is actually so terrible?

- Judging by the labels on the drugs that I examined in the frame, she was prescribed interferons. Interferon treatment is really severe, prolonged injection therapy that can cause a lot of side effects. Including such as we see in the series. She can really provoke depression, suicidal thoughts, hair loss. And many other unpleasant symptoms. But it can take place without "side effects".

Until 2011, there was no other therapy for the treatment of hepatitis C. But now this is an outdated treatment regimen. Although it is still appointed in some regions.

Frame from the series "Storm" Photo: provided by the video service Start

I think after two or three years interferon therapy will completely leave. Modern antiviral therapy is pills that people drink and do not notice treatment. They do not affect performance and well -being.

- Viral hepatitis, like HIV, many people still consider us marginal diagnoses. They are customary to hide and be shy. Especially in small cities.

- With stigmatization, a person may encounter anywhere. In 2011, my wife wanted to donate blood as a donor. And she found out that she had hepatitis C. She was very surprised, began to ask how and where she could become infected.

The doctor, who made a diagnosis, only scorching contemptuously: "This is a disease of drug addicts and prostitutes"

The wife had a shock. She never smoked or drank alcohol. This did not happen in some district clinic in the province, but in the metropolitan federal scientific center. For two weeks, she could not decide to tell me about the diagnosis and suffered that it might have infected her. By that time, we have been married for eight years.

Then there was very little information about hepatitis in the public domain. To achieve an examination and get treatment, the wife went out with a poster to the Ministry of Health and stood in a single picket. The meaning of the action was simple: “Everyone can become infected. I'm not to blame that I have hepatitis, and I do not know where it is from. People need to be treated, give access to treatment. ” A year later, the wife fell into clinical studies of modern progressive drugs and since then healthy.

Then I was very hooked by a stigmatized attitude towards people with hepatitis. After this story, we began to work in the public organization "Together against hepatitis." Provide information support to patients. We help to take a diagnosis. We explain where to contact and what to count on.

Frame from the series "Storm" Photo: provided by the video service Start

- How easy is hepatitis C in everyday life? The heroine of Anna Mikhalkova is even afraid to hug her husband so as not to infect him.

- There are a lot of myths and prejudices. People come up with some incredible stories in which they themselves believe. The other day, a woman called a hot line: “I accidentally stepped on a used condom on the street. I came home, washed my shoes, washed the floor. Could I get infected? " It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so sad. People sometimes reach such paranoia, you don’t know right away what to answer.

Until now, sometimes pregnant women who find antibodies on screening are offered to have an abortion with the words: “You will have a freak to be born.” Hepatitis C is not transmitted with household contacts. And you need to be a big extreme in sex to get infected through sexual contact. There should be serious bleeding damage to the genitals in both partners.

My wife and I, before we learned about her hepatitis, lived together for more than one year. They had sex, used the same dishes, she took my razor, the same cats scratched us. And I did not get infected.

- What is the situation with viral hepatitis in Russia? The numbers vary very much.

-According to experts, chronic viral hepatitis in three to four million Russians. We are in a situation where the state does not know exactly how many people need treatment, how many funds are necessary for this. Therapy is expensive. But treating hepatitis itself is economically more advisable than to treat its consequences later.

In 2016, Russia signed the WHO strategy for hepatitis. To defeat hepatitis C, by 2030, 123 thousand people should receive therapy annually. Last year, at the expense of the budget, about 16 thousand people received therapy. This seems to be a drop in the sea, but from year to year the number of drugs purchased by the state is increasing.

According to WHO, 70% of people have never done a screening for hepatitis C. And do not know their viral status either by HIV or hepatitis. Hepatitis is asymptomatic. Many will learn about their diagnosis when the liver has already been destroyed. And all this time they involuntarily were a source of infection.

Frame from the series "Storm" Photo: provided by the video service Start

-Is it possible to somehow push people to check?

- I always think how to hook these 70% and make you think. I am grateful to the authors of the series that they started talking about hepatitis. And especially for the choice of the heroine. If in the series “Call DiCaprio” the main character, who learned about his positive HIV status, from a bohemian party, then the heroine in “Storm” is an ordinary woman. As conditionally prosperous as I call it. He does not use drugs, does not change her husband. She is from those who are sure that they are not at risk. After all, hepatitis cannot touch them.

Nevertheless, on vacation on the beach, they could spontaneously decide on a tattoo and take viral hepatitis in memory. I had an idea to make a video for cinemas, in which it would not be clear that he was about hepatitis.

"Storm" will just be watched first of all as an action -packed film, and simultaneously they will learn about hepatitis

Although, of course, I would like to see tonality not so depressing. So that the viewer does not have the impression that hepatitis C can be recovered only by killing someone. But if the viewer has questions, we are always ready to connect and answer them.

***

The cinema "Storm" is released every Thursday from September 5 exclusively on the video service of Start. According to Takiedla promotional codes, readers can take free to subscribe for two weeks and watch not only the “storm”, but the entire Start catalog. And these are the main TV shows and cinema in Russian, original projects created specifically for subscribers, and premieres before the broadcast on TV.

Boris Khlebnikov Hepatitis C Cinema