Quick snorts can lead to a long illness

Banknotes are trouble in more ways than one.

LONDON - Experts are warning of a potential "health time bomb" from drug users snorting cocaine through banknotes, threatening to infect thousands with hepatitis C.

They fear the sharing of banknotes by cocaine users will cause the numbers of those infected with hepatitis C to soar. They are particularly concerned because eight out of 10 carriers don't know they have the virus.

The disease is carried through the blood and users can easily fail to notice small traces of blood on their banknotes, which are then passed around a group. Without treatment, hepatitis C can lead to chronic liver disease.

The Department of Health estimates 200,000 people are infected with hepatitis C in Britain but the Hepatitis C Trust believes the number could be much higher.

Trust chief executive Charles Gore said: "Estimates show about 5000 new cases of hepatitis C are diagnosed every year - but they are mainly through chance. Because so many are undiagnosed, we can't tell what kind of problem we are looking at.

"When 5000 banknotes were tested in London [in 2000], 99 per cent of them had traces of cocaine on them. That tells us there is potentially an enormous problem in diagnosis and people's awareness of how easily hepatitis C can be contracted.

"We are concerned that if more is not done to alert people to the dangers of sharing, then what is already a big problem risks being turned into a health time bomb."

Professor Graham Foster, of St Mary's Hospital, London, said: "Sharing banknotes or straws is a significant risk factor people need to be more aware of. Although the risk of contracting hepatitis C through snorting is lower than through sharing a needle, it is still there.

"We can detect levels of hepatitis C for weeks after it has been on a surface [but] infectious levels will only remain for a few hours, maybe more."

The trust set up a campaign called What Not to Share and was yesterday seeking donations to mark World Hepatitis Awareness Day.

- INDEPENDENT