HEROIN DEATH CRISIS AS TOLL REACHES 12

A 25-year-old Aberdeen mother has become the latest victim of the mystery
illness affecting drug injectors. Another death in Glasgow yesterday
brought the toll in the city to 12.

Research is pointing towards the theory that the bacterium or virus is one
that grows without oxygen, which is why those injecting into muscle are
most at risk.

The parents of Rachael Wilson, of Bedford Avenue, who died in Aberdeen
Royal Infirmary on Sunday, and had a young daughter, Sarah-Louise, issued a
statement last night.

Hugh and Margaret Wilson said: "We have been devastated by the death of
Rachael who was a loving daughter, caring sister, and devoted mother."

The Scottish outbreak has now been linked with one in Dublin, where seven
drug users have died.

A total of 26 addicts in Glasgow and 14 drug users in Dublin have been
affected by the illness.

Of the 26 Glasgow cases, 17 have been women, including eight of the dead.

Two cases were reported in Lanarkshire which have strong Glasgow connections.

Meanwhile, a second person has died in northern Oxfordshire after injecting
themselves with a rogue batch of heroin. Police yesterday disclosed that
Nicholas Byrne, 24, died in the Horton General Hospital in Banbury at the
weekend - four days after his girlfriend died of a suspected drugs overdose.

As the death toll climbed in Scotland, Dr Arun Mukerjee, consultant in
public health medicine at Grampian Health Board, urged users: "First of all
stop injecting. If that is not possible do not inject into muscle, and
finally if you have any symptoms do not assume it is a mild illness - seek
medical help. These deaths are preventable."

Greater Glasgow Health Board have now enlisted the help of Dr Jai Lingappa,
a senior epidemiologist from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention
in Atlanta, who flew to the city last week. A colleague went to Dublin at
the weekend.

Dr Laurence Gruer, a consultant in public health medicine with Greater
Glasgow Health Board, said: "We believe we are looking at two outbreaks
with a common cause. Most of the evidence points towards the heroin being
at the root of it but so far our efforts to find the actual cause have been
unsuccessful."

He said it could be either a very difficult to grow organism or even one
which had not been previously encountered.

"The type of bugs we are now looking at are those which typically grow only
in the absence of oxygen because those are the sort of conditions which
could be created by injecting into a muscle with the mixture of citric acid
and heroin killing the tissue round about where the needle has gone in. If
the bugs could resist the acid then they would have a field day.

"We have found reports of a small number of cases in other parts of the
world where this sort of thing has happened and they have managed to
isolate certain types of bug that grow only in the absence of oxygen."

All the cases so far appear to have followed users injecting into muscle or
accidentally into other tissues after missing a vein. Patients have
developed severe inflammation around the site of the injection. In the most
serious cases this has been followed by shock, collapse and death.

* Scots need better information if the fight against drugs is to yield
results, deputy justice minister Angus MacKay said yesterday.

Mr MacKay, who was speaking at the launch of a Drugs Misuse Website, said:
"This site will be a one-stop shop, a first port of call for anyone seeking
reliable information.

"Everyone, from the public to workers in the field to the Executive itself,
serves to benefit from access to the research reports, discussion forums
and media comment on the website."

The address is www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org.

The Minister also announced the first national study to assess how many
injecting drug users there are and to get a clearer picture of rates of
Hepatitis C infection among them.