Until recently, the only medical treatment available for the hepatitis C virus (HCV) was interferon-based therapy, a notoriously long and arduous treatment with limited success. However, in December 2015, the Australian Government announced a scheme of ‘universal access’ to new, highly effective direct-acting antiviral therapies (DAAs). This article draws on in-depth interviews with community actors engaged in national and state-based drug user and viral hepatitis advocacy to trace how universal access to curative medicines affords revised notions of citizenship and social inclusion among people who inject drugs and others affected by HCV. To inform our analysis, we draw on and combine critical perspectives from the biological citizenship literature, particularly pharmaceutical citizenship, along with work on the concepts of ‘publics and counterpublics’. We ask: what kinds of emergent HCV communities or publics are being enacted through our participant accounts in response to the new DAA-era of universal access, and what forms of citizenship and inclusion (or non-citizenship and exclusion) do they postulate? Some accounts indeed enacted treatment as an individual, sometimes collective, ‘good’: a citizenship potential. However, a number of accounts enacted situated limits to a straightforward actualisation of this potential, performing a model of public health governance that prioritised viral cure whilst rendering injecting drug use and its attendant social disadvantages an absent presence. Reconceptualising HCV treatment within a counterpublic health sensibility would, by engaging with the everyday health needs and aspirations of people living with HCV in conditions of social disadvantage, create space for new social inclusions and citizenships.

直到最近，可用于丙型肝炎病毒 (HCV) 的唯一药物治疗是基于干扰素的治疗，这是众所周知的漫长而艰巨的治疗，但收效甚微。然而，2015 年 12 月，澳大利亚政府宣布了一项“普及”新型高效直接抗病毒疗法 (DAA) 的计划。本文利用对从事国家和州吸毒者和病毒性肝炎宣传的社区行为者的深入访谈，以追溯治疗药物的普遍可及如何在注射吸毒者和其他受丙肝病毒影响的人中提供修正的公民身份和社会包容概念. 为了为我们的分析提供信息，我们借鉴并结合了生物公民文献中的批判观点，特别是药物公民，以及关于“公众和反公众”概念的工作。我们问：什么样的新兴 HCV 社区或公众正在通过我们的参与者帐户制定，以响应新的 DAA 时代的普遍访问，以及他们假定什么形式的公民身份和包容（或非公民身份和排斥）？一些账户确实制定了个人待遇，有时是集体待遇，“好”：公民潜力。然而，许多说明限制了这种潜力的直接实现，执行了一种公共卫生治理模型，该模型优先考虑病毒治疗，同时使注射吸毒及其随之而来的社会不利因素不存在。在反公共卫生敏感性下重新概念化 HCV 治疗将通过满足处于社会不利条件下的 HCV 感染者的日常健康需求和愿望，为新的社会包容和公民身份创造空间。