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patitis Free Mongolia, Phase 2 (HFM), had the goal "To eliminate hepatitis C (HCV) across Sukhbaatar province while creating a scalable project for HCV elimination in rural Mongolia." In technical standards, this means screening 90% of the population and curing 80% of those who test positive. To date, over 94% of Sukhbaatar province have been screened for HBV and HCV, with 59% of HCV patients cured. We estimate we need at least $18,000 to achieve an 80%+ cure rate for HCV. These funds will connect roughly 350 people to a combination of treatment and required advanced testing, paying for those who cannot afford it, estimated to be 40-50%.
HFM is everything we believed it to be and more. Most notable is the global recognition. Dr. John Ward is the past Director of Hepatitis at the US Centers for Disease Control and is now the Director of the Coalition for Global Hepatitis Elimination (CGHE). He is a big Rotary fan. For years, he knocked on doors, meeting multiple presidents and Rotary leadership, advocating for Rotary to commit to Hepatitis as the next "Polio." He eventually learned there would be no distraction from Polio. He remains impressed and committed to collaborating with Rotary on the largest scale possible. He has followed FIRE's (FIRE - Flagstaff International Relief Effort, the grant's NGO partner in Mongolia, headquartered in Flagstaff, AZ) work with Rotary for a decade. Most recently, he offered to raise matching funds for Rotary's Programs of Scale, an annual $2M grant, if HFM were to reach that point. Similarly, Dr. Olufunmilayo Lesi (Funmi), the Global Hepatitis Team Lead for the World Health Organization (WHO), is a Rotary fan and has followed a similar path of meeting Rotary leadership as Dr. Ward. She is also eager to collaborate with Rotary on a large-scale and is closely following HFM.
HFM has had incredible visibility worldwide, presented as a joint Rotary-FIRE project. It was featured as a poster presentation at the World Hepatitis Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, in April 2024. In March 2025, it was a poster presentation at the Global Hepatitis Summit in Los Angeles, CA, and an oral presentation at the Asian Pacific Study of the Liver (APASL) in Beijing, China. In April 2026, it will be featured in a poster tour at the World Hepatitis Summit in Bangkok, Thailand. HFM has had incredible visibility worldwide, presented as a joint Rotary-FIRE project.
In January 2026, FIRE donated $25,000 ($5K from FIRE and $20K from a grant from the CDA Foundation) to build a state-of-the-art patient registry to replace the hand-built Excel spreadsheet for 44,402 people. The previous patient registry began to perform sub-optimally in Spring 2025. In January, we hired a Mongolian IT company and expect our new registry to be ready in May 2026.
Hepatitis C is terminal. It will evolve into cirrhosis or liver cancer. In Mongolia, HCV is primarily spread through healthcare settings, including hospitals, dental clinics, and home healthcare. Mongolia has the highest rate of liver cancer in the world and among the highest rates of hepatitis B and C. A full, 3-month HCV curative, life-saving treatment for one person costs 70 USD in Mongolia. The RC in Mongolia currently has $12,000 remaining in its bank account. In November 2025, RC Flagstaff and FIRE agreed to close the grant if the $12K were transferred to TRF and then to RC Flagstaff, to be spent by FIRE in Mongolia under RC Flagstaff and D5495's supervision, with sanctions against the RC in Mongolia.
In the best-case scenario, RC Flagstaff receives $12K from TRF, and we only need $ 6K more to meet the grant's minimum commitment to the community. Laura Trout, RC Flagstaff IPP and Grant Committee Chair, and Meredith are prepared to ask the RC Flagstaff Board to approve $2,000 for a $4K DDF match.
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