Pharmacists are urging colleagues to step up their approach to hepatitis B, in response to calls from Nice for more people in the UK to be assessed, referred and offered treatment for the infection.

Offering screening as well as hepatitis B vaccination was an "obvious service" for pharmacy to provide, pharmacists told C+D after Nice warned that the condition was still under-recognised in the UK and there were misconceptions about its causes and treatment.

Nice called for primary healthcare professionals to arrange further tests for people found to be hepatitis B surface antigen positive, and refer them straight on to a hepatologist or gastroenterologist, in its first guidance on the diagnosis and management of hepatitis B, issued last week (June 25).

"It's such an obvious way to support the client group in terms of needle users and patients who might use methadone" Gavin Birchall MedicX Pharmacy	More on pharmacy services Pharmacy consortia the way to secure services,       NHS seminar hears Independents should use local knowledge to gain       edge on services Pharmacy needs funding to counter rise in STI cases MORE NEWS
	Pharmacist Gary Warner, who offers hepatitis B, C, HIV and syphilis testing at Regent Pharmacy on the Isle of Wight, said now was the time for pharmacists to approach commissioners. "With the advent of the Nice guidance, now will be an appropriate time to go for it," he said.

"It's such an obvious way to support the client group in terms of needle users and patients who might use methadone," agreed MedicX Pharmacy operations director Gavin Birchall, whose Rotherham branch was commissioned four years ago to run a hepatitis B testing service and vaccination scheme alongside drug and alcohol services. The service scooped a C+D Award in 2011 for Clinical Service of the Year.

Kingsland Pharmacy owner Mukhta Manji, who offers a combined hepatitis B, C and HIV test in Hackney, said: "It's something that would be a good add-on service because you get people coming in who are not necessarily aware that these things are going to happen," he added.

The independent group that developed Nice's public health guidance on hepatitis B last December said there was "encouraging evidence" from pilot schemes in which pharmacists provide dried blood spot testing for hepatitis. Commissioners should consider extending pilot schemes in pharmacies where testing and treatment services were currently offered or could be in the future, it said. 

About 180,000 people in the UK are believed to have hepatitis B, which affects the liver and often has few symptoms in the first few years after it is contracted. The figure could be closer to 325,000 if the estimated 6,500 people with chronic hepatitis B who migrate to the UK each year are included, said Nice.