Blog: Indian Country Dying of a Curable Disease

With Indigenous People’s Day this week (known to some as Columbus Day), there is opportunity for collective acknowledgement of one of the many inequities that American Indian and Alaska Native people face in the United States.

Indian Country, which includes 566 self-governing tribal communities throughout the United States, has a desperate need for greater access to treatment for the hepatitis C virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Indian and Alaska Native people have the highest mortality rate from hepatitis C of any race or ethnicity.