SHARING OF NEEDLES DROPS

Risky Practice Reduced, Says Study

A new study says Vancouver's safe-injection site has largely reduced needle
sharing among many high-risk drug users.

The paper, by researchers at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, is
to be published today in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal.

The study found that intravenous drug users who use the injection site in
the Downtown Eastside are 70-per-cent less likely to share needles.

"After the facility opened, we're seeing reductions in this dangerous
behaviour," said lead author Thomas Kerr yesterday.

He added: "This is extremely important because Vancouver has been the site
of one of the most explosive HIV epidemics among injection-drug users that
has ever been observed in the developed world."

The prevalence of blood-borne diseases among Vancouver injection-drug users
is high: About 30 per cent have HIV/AIDS and 95 per cent are infected with
hepatitis C.

Needle sharing among intravenous drug users is one of the leading causes of
HIV and hepatitis C.

The study reveals that drug users who need help with injecting or who go on
drug binges were more likely to share syringes.

Researchers looked at the habits of 431 injection-drug users to see how
many shared syringes to shoot up heroin, cocaine, crystal meth or other drugs.

About 90 -- or 21 per cent -- reported visiting the injection site for
"some, most or all of their injections," said Kerr.

The injection site, which opened in September 2003, is the only one in
North America.

Dubbed InSite, its aim is to provide a safe alternative to the streets for
addicts to inject drugs. Sterile syringes and water are provided, and
nurses oversee injections to help prevent overdose deaths and to offer
addiction counselling.

Benedikt Fischer, a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, said yesterday that studies of such
facilities have shown that most injectors don't use them for the majority
of their drug hits.

Someone who is hooked on heroin or cocaine, and may inject up to 20 times a
day, is not going to wait in line at an injection clinic after scoring
drugs from a dealer, he said. Most will shoot up on the street, in a
vehicle or back alley -- and that may involve using contaminated needles.

In a Lancet editorial, Wayne Hall of the University of Queensland in
Australia agrees that only a fraction of Vancouver's drug injectors use InSite.

"It is generally optimistic to expect a single facility to reduce overdose
deaths and infections by blood-borne viruses in the community, even if the
facility is shown to reduce risk behaviour in patrons," Hall writes.