INJECTION SITES CURTAIL SHARING OF NEEDLES, STUDY FINDS

TORONTO - 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 in the city's 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.

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.

Dubbed InSite, the clinic opened in September 2003 to provide a safe
alternative to the streets for Vancouver addicts to inject drugs. Sterile
syringes and water are provided, and nurses oversee injections to help
prevent overdose deaths and to offer addiction counselling and treatment
referrals.