Planning to write a guideline on diagnosis and management for acute HCV in conjunction with ESCMID, ISC, the Japanese Society of Chemotherapy, EASL and industrial companies. Research to finance this activity is ongoing.

Diagnosis of acute HCV infection is difficult. We are keen to generate a panel of serum/plasma samples from patients known to be undergoing acute infection, in order to validate future diagnostic assays e.g. IgG avidity testing. If you see such patients in your clinics, and have access to blood/serum/plasma samples surplus to diagnostic requirements, we would like to try and create a biobank of such material. Please contact any member of the Executive Committee if you are interested in this endeavour.
Identification of a network of virological laboratories willing to share protocols and laboratory procedures aimed at the validation of new techniques for the diagnosis and monitoring of acute and chronic hepatitis B and C infection and treatment will also be developed in the next months.

A number of special interest groups within ESCMID have opened their doors to corporate membership. The ESGVH executive has also decided to do this, as a way of interesting and involving diagnostic and therapeutic companies in our activities. We believe that progress in the diagnosis and management of viral hepatitis requires collaborative effort and input from both physicians and industry. The ESCMID executive recently released updated "ESCMID Operating Procedures for Study Groups" guiding all Study Group activities - including corporate membership - and subsequently, we have invited a number of companies to join ESGVH. We hope that this will encourage them to organize hepatitis-related symposia at ECCMID, thereby increasing the hepatitis content of those annual meetings. If ESGVH members know of companies that would be interested in joining us, please let a member of the Executive Committee know so that we can send out our standard letter of invitation to them. The standard ESGVH fee for corporate membership is 1'000 Euros, so this also represents a way in which ESGVH can accumulate modest financial support to fund and extend our activities.