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Health-related quality of life assessment can benefit several groups involved with health care. The aim of our study was to assess construct validity, reliability, discriminant ability and sensitivity to change of the Dutch translation of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ), a disease-specific quality-of-life questionnaire. A group of 120 IBD patients completed the IBDQ and two Visual Analogue Scales concerning general well-being and bowel function twice. Fifty-two patients also completed the Short-Form 36 twice. Disease activity was assessed once. Correlations between the IBDQ scores and the global assessments were reasonably high and the IBDQ was shown to be discriminative. High intraclass correlation coefficients between both measurements of the IBDQ were observed in patients who reported no change in bowel complaints. In contrast, significant differences were found between both moments in patients who reported change. The Dutch IBDQ proved to be valid, discriminative and reliable.

Summary Due to the introduction of newer, more efficacious treatment options, there is a pressing need for policy makers and public health officials to develop or adapt national hepatitis C virus (HCV) control strategies to the changing epidemiological landscape. To do so, detailed, country‐specific data are needed to characterize the burden of chronic HCV infection. In this study of 17 countries, a literature review of published and unpublished data on HCV prevalence, viraemia, genotype, age and gender distribution, liver transplants and diagnosis and treatment rates was conducted, and inputs were validated by expert consensus in each country. Viraemic prevalence in this study ranged from 0.2% in Hong Kong to 2.4% in Taiwan, while the largest viraemic populations were in Nigeria (2 597 000 cases) and Taiwan (569 000 cases). Diagnosis, treatment and liver transplant rates varied widely across the countries included in this analysis, as did the availability of reliable data. Addressing data gaps will be critical for the development of future strategies to manage and minimize the disease burden of hepatitis C.

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Summary The hepatitis C virus (HCV) epidemic was forecasted through 2030 for 17 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, and interventions for achieving the Global Health Sector Strategy on viral hepatitis targets—“WHO Targets” (65% reduction in HCV‐related deaths, 90% reduction in new infections and 90% of infections diagnosed by 2030) were considered. Scaling up treatment and diagnosis rates over time would be required to achieve these targets in all but one country, even with the introduction of high SVR therapies. The scenarios developed to achieve the WHO Targets in all countries studied assumed the implementation of national policies to prevent new infections and to diagnose current infections through screening.