How could I catch it?

The hepatitis C virus is ‘blood-borne’, which means that people are infected through direct contact with infected blood.

The most common ways in which hepatitis C is spread are by receiving infected blood or blood products (for example, blood transfusion before 1992) and by sharing needles and syringes when injecting drugs.

As people can be infected with hepatitis C and not have symptoms, it may not be obvious that they carry the virus. However, people who carry the virus and have no symptoms can still be infectious if their blood comes into contact with the blood or tissue of another person.