INJECTION SITES CUT HIV RISK

Street Drug Users Less Likely To Share Needles, Study Says

Giving addicts a safe, supervised place to inject drugs may help reduce
syringe-sharing, thereby preventing the spread of hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS,
Canadian research suggests.

A University of British Columbia study has found that drug users who
regularly use Vancouver's safe-injection site on the gritty east side are
70 per cent less likely to share needles than those who give the facility a
pass.

"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," said Thomas Kerr, a researcher at
the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and lead author of the study.

"We know syringe sharing is the primary driving factor of these two
epidemics," Kerr said from Vancouver.

"So it's very good news to have identified an intervention that seems to be
having some type of protective effect."

But addiction experts, noting that the number of participants in the study
was small and the city's drug-abuse problem complex, say the injection
site's impact on curtailing needle-sharing should not be overstated.

The study, appearing in this week's issue of the Lancet, 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 North America's only safe-injection clinic for "some,
most or all of their injections," said Kerr.

Seventy per cent of those who made use of the injection site reported being
less likely to share syringes "than individuals who used the facility only
occasionally or not at all," said Kerr.

Dubbed InSite, the clinic opened in 2003 to provide a safe alternative to
the streets for Vancouver addicts to inject drugs.