Living Without HepC

Here are some statistics about the The HepC Forum for 2006. Google Analytics is a programme I use to keep track of various statistics about the usage of the Forum. I have been looking at this year’s stats and found some interesting information. [Google Analytics, through the use of cookies, tracks Unique Visitors to the Forum and how many pages are read on each visit. This is more sophisticated than just tracking the number of “hits” the site receives. On the simple “hit” basis, the Forum gets more than 150,000 hits per month - a considerable amount of traffic.]

During 2006, there were 121,259 Visitors to the Forum and 1,830,389 Pageviews.

This means:
There were an average of 10,000 visits per month
On average, 15.09 pages were viewed during each visit

Of the 121,259 Visitors to the Forum, 94,724 were Return Visitors and 25,432 were New Visitors

Predominantly Visitors are from the UK and then the United States. This is a list of the other countries where the most Visitors came from (followed by the [number of visitors] and percentage of total):

United Kingdom [70,911] 58.48 %
United States [30,435] 25.01%
Australia [4,940] 4.07%
Canada [4,768] 4.07%
Yugoslavia [1,369] 1.13%
Belgium [1,185] 0.98%
Spain [1,060] 0.87%
Switzerland [887] 0.73%
Netherlands [496] 0.41%
Germany [484] 0.40%

But Visitors also come form other countries around the world. Here is a list in descending order: Czech Republic, Japan, France, Israel, New Zealand, Ireland, India, Norway, Latvia, Turkey, Pakistan, Finland, Luxembourg, China, Poland, Greece, Croatia, Egypt, Romania, Italy, Bulgaria, Singapore, Russian Federation, Denmark, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Cayman Islands, Sweden, Philippines, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Argentina, Hong Kong, Brazil, Estonia, Austria, Portugal, Hungary, Nigeria, Taiwan, Islamic Republic of Iran, Vietnam, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malta, Kuwait. (I know from deleting spammers that some originate from these countries and they are not all Visitors interested in HepC.)

How do they find the Hepatitis C Forum? What other sites have led Visitors to the Forum?

Source [Referring Site] and number of Visits:
(direct)(none) 40,715
Google 33,908
hepc.nhs.uk 6,605
theboltons.plus.com 5,804
hepcboy.com 4,205
yahoo 8,449
search[organic] 1,608
hepcuk.info (HepC Trust) 1,463
britishlivertrust.org.uk 1,407
msn 1,098
aol 911
blogger.com 401

And how often do they visit? About a fifth (25,656) visit just the once. But slightly more than a fifth (26,552) visited more than 201 times over the year. And the rest fall somewhere in between. Referring to someone who visits at least 15-25 times in the year as a ‘regular reader’, the statistics below shows there are over 42,000 regular Visitors to the Forum.

1 Visit – 25656 Visitors
2 Visits – 5168 Visitors
3 Visits – 3063 Visitors
4 Visits – 2293 Visitors
5 Visits – 1947 Visitors
6 Visits – 1688 Visitors
7 Visits – 1524 Visitors
8 Visits – 1390 Visitors
9 to 14 Visits – 6507 Visitors
15 to 25 Visits – 7900 Visitors
26 to 50 Visits – 11220 Visitors
51 to 100 Visits – 12756 Visitors
101 to 200 Visits – 13595 Visitors
over 201 Visits – 26552 Visitors

This confirms my long-held view that as well as the core of people who sign up as Members and post regularly there are many more Visitors who read and ‘lurk’ without becoming Members. We have recently more and more new members introducing themselves in the “Hello, I’m New” section by saying they have been reading regularly for some months and have decided to now post for the first time.

To me this is important for us as Forum members to realise. We are not just having a dialogue between ourselves as Members, we are also speaking to the silent majority out there who haven’t yet found their voice in this HepC discussion.

I know how difficult it was to come to terms with the reality of having HepC and I suspect lots of people find it hard to actually commit themselves to writing about themselves and this virus on a website – they need to take time to read and absorb.

As we move into the New Year I would like to remember the ‘lurkers’ and the ’silent majority’ readers and wish everyone a healthy and successful 2007.

I have been active in the current UK government Hepatitis C Awareness campaign since it was launched in December 2004 by Sir Liam Donaldson Chief Medical Officer for England. I was present at the launch, gave a TV interview, had my portrait done by Michele Martinoli for the Out of the Shadows Exhibition and attended several of the road-show Exhibitions. This weblog is featured on the NHS Hepatitis C Awareness website as is my portrait.

I got involved because I believed there are a lot of people who don’t know they have the Hepatitis C virus. Like me they could have been living for decades without knowing they have it. And when I was diagnosed I couldn’t find out enough about what it’s like to live with HepC and to go through treatment. I got involved because I wanted to change that.

The people I know at the communications company that handle the Hepatitis C Awareness campaign for the government work hard on their campaign ideas. They have always struck me as committed and have been friendly and helpful to me. Over time I know they have learned a lot about HepC too. I believe they do their best – within the brief they have been given.

Within the brief they have been given. Like others, I have felt for some time now that the brief is not right. The government aren’t committing enough to the campaign to make it really effective. We’ve seen the examples of massive expenditure on campaigns to alert the public that TV is going digital and to cut back on salt intake. The sums committed to HepC Awareness are pitiful by comparison. I’m committed, the staff working on the campaign are committed but we need to hear the government being more committed.

So I’m supporting the Hepatitis C Trust’s initiative in making an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website. Samanatha May from the Hepatitis C Trust wrote to me about it.

Please would you take the time to sign in and please forward/publicise this link to anyone you know who would be willing to support it. The more signatures we gain the better and the whole process takes less than a minute – just click on the link.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/HepatitisC/

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to accept that the current public hepatitis C awareness campaign is not working and that the rate of diagnosis is nowhere near enough to prevent thousands of avoidable deaths. We further petition the Prime Minister to make it a government priority to do far more to diagnose the hundreds of thousands people in the UK who still do not realise that they are infected with this potentially life-threatening disease and then provide dedicated funding for their care and treatment”.
Your support in this would be much appreciated.

(You must be a British citizen or resident to sign the petition.)

I also want to support another initiative which Sam also wrote about:

Secondly, we have been contacted by Hepasist, a Bulgarian patient association who have asked for our support in signing a petition for them.
There are approximately 250,000 -350,000 hepatitis sufferers in Bulgaria. However, the disease is far from being addressed as a major public health issue and treatment is not being offered to patients. There is a huge waiting list (many patients have been waiting to get the treatment for more than 1.5 years) but nothing seems to be happening.

Hepasist, the only Bulgarian organisation devoted to hepatitis C, has practically exhausted all their means to try to negotiate with their health authorities.

In order to support their fight, it has now launched a national online campaign which aims to collect votes from people all over Europe. Through this initiative they hope to grab their government’s attention.

Hepasist truly believes that if enough pressure is built up (especially if this pressure is coming from abroad), their health authorities will eventually have to start taking action against the disease and patients will finally be offered treatment. With that in mind, we kindly ask for your help. The voting process is extremely easy and takes less than 30 seconds. All you need to do is to click on the link and fill in your details (name/email and occupation)

http://www.hepasist.com/vote/index.php

By extending your support to the Bulgarians you will be ultimately saving lives.

So please take the time to click on the links and sign your name to save lives.