Mr. Varaldo is founder and president of the "Grupo Otimismo de Apoio ao Portador de Hepatite" an advocacy organization that disseminates information about hepatitis, helps build support for hepatitis testing and treatment and believes that information is an excellent medicine. As such, he coordinated a petition that demanded DAAs in the public health system of Brazil, with the single condition that prices should be feasible and fair. This petition supported negotiations in Brazil leading to the very first major discounts outside Gilead's and MPP's expanded access programmes, for sofosbuvir, daclatasvir and simeprevir still in early 2014. Since that time, treatments jumped from 15,000 to >45,000 per year. In 2020, Varaldo's organization will be focused on the challenge of testing and linkage to care.