TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP) – Recovering addict Judith Anderson figures if she hadn’t entered a program that caught and treated the hepatitis C she contracted after years of intravenous drug use, she wouldn’t be alive to convince others to get checked out.

The 74-year-old resident of Sallisaw, Oklahoma – about 160 miles (257 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City near the Arkansas border – said the potentially fatal liver disease sapped her of energy and “any desire to go anywhere or do anything.”

“It was like living with a death sentence,” she said of the infection that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in 2016 killed more people than HIV and tuberculosis combined. “You’re just tired all the time.”

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