Hundreds of prisoners have agreed to be part of a new drug trial to drive down Hepatitis C infection rates in jails.

The STOP C study is being led by Professor Andrew Lloyd at the University of New South Wales.

Professor Lloyd said consenting prisoners would be provided with direct-acting, anti-viral drugs, funded by pharmaceutical company Gilead.

The tablets are taken once a day for 12 weeks, and have a 90 per cent cure rate, although the drugs are not yet available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

"It's obviously pretty good for the individuals who get treated because we'll probably pretty likely get rid of the virus from them," Professor Lloyd said.

"We've got this secondary added benefit that other people, who might be at risk, will not get infected."

He said it was an important study because it could help stop the spread of infection when inmates leave prison.

"It's a great intervention, plausibly, to reduce the pool of infected individuals for the community at large."

Professor Lloyd said several hundred prisoners in two maximum-security jails had agreed to be part of the testing phase of the study.

The prisoners will be administered with Hepatitis C medicine later this year.

Research suggests about one in eight new prisoners contracts Hepatitis C in the state's prisons.

"The prevalence of infection is high in prisoners. Overall, it's about 30 per cent among the male and higher — about 60 per cent — among female prisoners," Professor Lloyd said.

"In the prison environment, one might think that there would be no new infections, but the truth is, one in three people are already infected with the virus."

Professor Lloyd said the spread of blood-borne viruses in prisons was caused by unsafe needle sharing, tattooing and even fights between prisoners when there was blood-to-blood contact.