Welcome to the Home Page for the Northwest Louisiana Hepatitis C Support Group, located in Bossier City, Louisiana!

This is your site, group members, where we can share coping strategies, give and get support for health, mental, and social problems related to HCV, find easy access to hepatitis C and other pertinent health related research and information, keep in contact with other group members, and just see what's happening with our group. We have live chat, a bulletin/message board, email contacts, links for resources and information, and a calendar for our group uses. Thanks for coming and if you have any suggestions to make the site/group better please feel free to email me, the site administrator at tygerhartone@aim.com. I know how physically challenging HCV can be, and made this site so none of us ever has to miss out on group happenings or discussions, and so that personal contact can be made when the need arises and one can't get to a meeting. Support is only a click or a call way, you need not be alone. This is a caring, safe place for anyone who is in the Northwest Louisiana area and feels the need to commune with others living with hepatitis C.

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• HCV is 7 times more contagious thanHIV/AIDS (Hepatitis Central) 
• Saliva can contain the HCV virus. (Hepatitis Central)
• There are 7 known types of hepatitis. (Also, here)
• Number of new infections per year has declined from an average of 240,000 in the 1980s to about 26,000 in 2004.  (CDC)
• There are 10 times more people infected in the U.S. with Hepatitis C than HIV/AIDS.
• More people in the U.S. die from hepatitis C than HIV/AIDS now.
• An estimated 4.1 million (1.6%) Americans have been infected with HCV, of whom 3.2 million are chronically infected. (CDC)
• Recent studies have shown that HCV can survive outside the body and still transmit infection for 16 hours, but not longer than 4 days. (CDC)
• One third of all liver transplants are necessary now due to HCV cirrhosis and liver failure.