With respect to HIV, we had the lowest number of new HIV diagnoses in B.C. since the mid 1990s in 2017 and 2018. The rate in 2017 seemed anomalously low. In 2018, it is still a decrease, but not as great as it was in 2017. We think we're generally on the right track, although the deceases are not as dramatic as we would like to see. Now that we've been running an HIV PrEP program for a year, in 2019 we hope to see really dramatic drops in new diagnoses amongst gbMSM, because we've seen this really dramatic scale-up of PrEP.
As far as hepatitis C goes, I happened to look at the HCV surveillance report for the country a couple days ago. It generally shows that overall, diagnoses have been on a slow, steady decline since 2012.
Mark Gilbert might know better about HCV rates specific to B.C.
Certainly, men who have sex with men are overrepresented in the HCV epidemic as well, but certainly not to as great an extent as people who use injection drugs. There is still a risk there. Of course, there is a lot of optimism around HCV now with effective and more affordable HCV treatment that is now getting publicly funded. I think that's another place where we're optimistic.