6,000 NEEDLES ARE MISSING

Exchange: Students Study Solution To Cleanup Woes

KELOWNA - While 60,000 needles have been handed out through Kelowna's
needle exchange this year, more than 6,000 are unaccounted for,
officials say.

Carly Newmarch, Crystal Hill and Dave Nishi are fourth-year nursing
students from Okanagan University College studying what programs for
needle retrieval are available to clean up city streets and parks.

The 6,000 missing needles are not necessarily lying around on the
street or the beach, said Ireland.

"They may have been properly disposed of," said Newmarch.

But some needles do end up discarded where they pose a hazard to the
public, possibly containing the HIV virus or other communicable
diseases such as hepatitis.

The exact numbers are hard to nail down, but the students have found
that parks department statistics show that 205 needles were picked up
by the end of October.