Hepatitis C Testing

Any blood-to-blood contact can expose you to a risk of hepatitis C. If you think you may have been exposed at any time you should get tested. Knowing if you have the virus means you can receive proper treatment.

It’s also recommended that people with a risk factor for hepatitis C should be tested. These include:¹

• people who inject drugs or have ever injected drugs
• people in custodial (jail) settings
• people with tattoos or body piercings
• people who use beauty salons
• people who had a blood transfusion or organ transplant before 1990
• people with coagulation (blood clotting) disorders who received blood products or clotting factor treatments derived from plasma, before 1993
• babies born to mothers who had hepatitis C
• people with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) or hepatitis B
• sexual partners of someone with hepatitis C
• men who have sex with men
• people with liver disease
• people who have had a needlestick injury
• migrants from countries where there is a high prevalence (e.g. Egypt, Pakistan, Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia).

To check if you have hepatitis C you need a blood test. This can be done at any pathology lab, at your convenience. You will need to ask your doctor for the test first.

There are two main types of blood tests to check for hepatitis C.¹

The first is an antibody test to see if you have ever been exposed to the hepatitis C virus.

If this hepatitis C test is positive it means you either have hepatitis C now or have had it in the past. There are new tests available at limited locations that enable rapid antibody test results at high-caseload services.

If your first test is positive, you will need to have a second hepatitis test. This is called a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test. This will show if you currently have hepatitis C and how much of the virus you have.

If you test positive, you will need treatment for hepatitis C. Around 95% of people who are treated for hepatitis C get better and are cured.

Hepatitis C tests are free through Medicare although there is a limit to how many free tests you can have each year.²

You will only get the second PCR test free, if your first antibody test is positive.