In what is being billed as the biggest PBS announcement since the government started funding the HPV vaccine Gardasil, the drugs – Sofosbuvir with ledipasvir (Harvoni), Sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), Daclatasvir (Daklinza), and Ribavirin (Ibavyr) – will be subsidised from March next year. Health Minister Sussan Ley says sporting organisations could lose government funding if they fail to provide gender-neutral travel arrangements. Credit:Andrew Meares The move will make Australia one of the first countries in the world to publicly subsidise the drugs for their entire population, no matter what a patient's condition is or how they contracted the disease. Crucially, the government will work with state and territory governments to make the treatments available to inmates in prison, where hepatitis C rates are typically very high. Ms Ley described the listing – which followed a positive recommendation from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee – as a "watershed moment" in Australian history.

One in 100 Australians from all walks of life currently suffer from the disease and there are 10,000 new cases every year, she said."However, with this announcement there is great hope we can not only halt the spread of this deadly infectious virus but eradicate it altogether in time," she said. The game changing new drugs have a success rate of more than 90 per cent across the entire hepatitis C population. The drugs are faster, less-invasive and inflict fewer side effects than anything currently available. In a majority of cases the medicines can be taken orally, with treatment duration as short as eight weeks. "Hepatitis C takes a heavy toll on patients and their families, but also the health system and the economy," Ms Ley said. "It's therefore important we tackle this disease head on, and that includes providing these medicines to all Australians, particularly vulnerable populations where rates of infection are high."

Hepatitis Australia chief executive Helen Tyrrell said the government's decision was "simply fantastic". "Christmas will be a particularly joyous time for many people now," she said. "The uncertainty is over and they now have the prospect of a truly happy and healthy 2016." "This will be lifesaving for some people, and it will bring quality of life back to many more people." The funding was fully accounted for in last week's mid-year budget update but was not announced at the time because confidential pricing negotiations with medicine suppliers were still being finalised, Ms Ley said. The hepatitis C announcement comes on top of $620 million in new and amended medicine listings that were announced in the update.

Hepatitis C is an infectious blood-borne virus that attacks the liver. It can lead to cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease and liver cancer. It has six different genotypes and kills an estimated 700 people a year, and debilitates thousands more. Deaths from primary liver cancer, for which untreated hepatitis C is a major driver, are rising faster than for any other type of cancer. The "best Christmas present" Jane Little, who is Hepatitis C positive is very happy at the early Christmas present from the government. Credit:Meredith O'Shea

For the first time since November 2010, Jane Little believes she might be around to see her beloved grandchildren and great-nieces grow up. The 62-year-old was diagnosed with hepatitis C just over five years ago. But Ms Little said she might have contracted the blood-borne virus in the 1980s because of intravenous drug use. The ability to access the "miracle" drug has given hope to the part-time singer and actor that she might yet be able to live life at her best. "That's why I gave up drugs and alcohol all those years ago, so I could be the best person that I could be for my children," Ms Little said.

"And now if I am free of Hep C, I mean it just makes me cry, to even think that I would be 100 per cent healthy." She said it was the "best Christmas present". "I have been waiting for five years for the drug [to be available on PBS]," Ms Little said. "In my 60s to enjoy my grandchildren ... I would like to enjoy the full optimum health to the best of my ability until I pass away, and hopefully, if I am free of this virus, that would not be for a very long time." 'It grinds you into the ground'

Martin Pearce is looking forward to breakthrough cures. Credit:Fiona Morris Martin Pearce lives in public housing in Little Bay. He has chronic high blood pressure. His limbs are swollen. He finds it hard to walk 500 metres. "My body is just literally falling apart," Mr Pearce, 66, says. Once, the Albury-Wodonga-born pensioner was a keen sportsman. Through the '60s, '70s and '80s he was an energetic habitué of the discos and clubs of Melbourne and Sydney – South Yarra's Fat Black Pussy Cat, the Cask wine bar in Bondi Road, North Sydney's Here disco. Then, in 1987 he was diagnosed with hepatitis C. Within a year his health and vigour had started to deteriorate. "As you get it more and more and more and it grinds you into the ground, your will to live is just not as strong as it used to be, and your will to look after yourself is not as strong as it used to be. It's very debilitating." Mr Pearce spent five years on the only drug then available to treat the virus, Interferon, but it didn't have any effect.

Now, the man who has unhappily lived in doctors' surgeries for nearly three decades is looking forward to an appointment to discover how soon he will be able to access the breakthrough hepatitis C cures that the Turnbull government will start subsidising under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. "If I don't get this new stuff, hep C will end up taking me in the end," said Mr Pearce, who has frequently considered taking his own life. "Recently even, because when you get that sick you just think, 'my life's sort of over, there's not too many bloody good things in my life'." Hepatitis C, he says, has "gradually reduced me to almost nothing." Mr Pearce's friend Charles Waterstreet, who also had hepatitis C, was part of a world trial of one of the drugs, Sofosbuvir​. It worked instantaneously and he is now clear of the virus. Waterstreet, a columnist for The Sun-Herald, is overjoyed at the government's announcement. "So many people have hep C who haven't come out; it's like a secret plague that only now is becoming a tsunami because people may have got it in the '80s and are only now beginning to [find out]."

with Stephanie Wood and Neelima Choahan Lifeline 13 11 14