Oriental exercise and traditional medicines are being offered to help Bradford people infected with the Hepatitis C virus.

Bridge - Bradford's community drugs project - is now seeking funding from various organisations to be able to offer regular Tai Chi to people with the disease.

The project already offers acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and herbs and hopes to extend what they have on offer.

Debbie Allen, of the Bridge project, said research had shown benefits from Chinese medicine for people with the virus, an infection which affects the liver.

It can lead to serious liver disease and is thought to affect about 70 per cent of drug users who currently inject or who have injected in the past.

Debbie Allen said that Bridge project, on Salem Street, had about 600 people using the service at present. And about 70 per cent of them are likely to have been injecting drug users, she added.

"We also offer acupuncture to relieve symptoms," she said.

The project offers counselling, advice and support as well as a wide variety of activities for drug users and their families. It also runs a needle exchange.

The service at Bridge was set up the expert help from John Tindall, who ran the Gateway Clinic in London, which pioneered the use of traditional Chinese medicine for hepatitis C in this country.

Research undertaken into knowledge about Hepatitis C among drug users in Bradford found that people who attended Bridge were more aware of the condition than those who had not attended.

And the age group of the men and length of time they were likely to have been injecting - more than two years - gave them a high risk of having contracted the virus.