The HCV story has nothing to do with private vs. public health care. Very effective treatment for HCV, without side effects, has existed for about 10 years. Before that the only option was Interferon, later combined with Ribavarin, which had horrible side effects and were only effective in a minority of cases (there are several strains of HCV, some easier to "kill" than others).
The new, revolutionary drugs that appeared about 10 years ago are produced by American pharmaceutical companies that invested zillions, and are now quite rightly making profits on them.
None of the many national research establishments came anywhere near, I assume because of inadequate funding and the inability to hire-and-fire to get the best scientists. I don't know if they even did any research on HCV.
As the world stands today, it is almost exclusively private companies that have the will and the means to gamble on research projects that may, or may not, result in profitable new drugs.
Another aspect is screening the population for HCV. This is cheap and should be done by the public health system. HCV takes 10, 20, 40 years before symptoms appear, by which time the liver is usually irreparably knackered.
Another thing I know is that the pharma companies that produce the HCV drugs make agreements with national governments to supply the drugs to the state health system at a lower price. I don't know what the situation in Malaysia is in this regard.
