MAKE NEEDLES EASIER TO OBTAIN: EXPERTS

Intravenous drug users should be able to buy needles and syringes from
suburban convenience stores and petrol stations, leading Australian drug
researchers say.

The needles and syringes should be sold only in proper packaging along with
information sheets on their disposal and they should not be sold to
children, the researchers say.

Needle exchange programs were urgently needed in prisons and youth training
centres, and safe injecting rooms were necessary to combat Australia's
hepatitis C epidemic, the researchers wrote in the latest Medical Journal of
Australia.

Public health authorities should also consider promoting strategies such as
smoking illicit drugs rather than intravenous drug use.

``Hepatitis C prevalence is now so high that even very occasional sharing of
needles and syringes carries an extreme risk of HCV infection,'' the
researchers warned.

It is estimated that about 65per cent of intravenous drug users have
hepatitis C. Fewer than 3per cent are estimated to have HIV.

The researchers, from the Centre for Harm Reduction at the MacFarlane Burnet
Centre for Medical Research and the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and
Clinical Research, said it was not only needles and syringes that left
intravenous drug users at risk of blood-borne viruses.

Contaminated equipment such as swabs, spoons, water vials and tourniquets,
as well as body parts and other surfaces, also posed a risk to intravenous
drug users. Although needle sharing among intravenous drug users appears to
have decreased in recent years, the researchers say minority groups such as
prisoners and Vietnamese migrants are more likely to share needles.

They called for urgent special programs to support Aboriginal intravenous
drug users and those from non-English-speaking backgrounds.

The director of the Centre for Harm Reduction, Dr Nick Crofts, said clean
needles and syringes should also be made available in police cells.

Needles and syringes should only be sold at convenience stores in proper
packaging along with information sheets on their disposal. He said they
should not be sold to children.

Hepatitis C presented a major public health challenge to Australia because
it had been around for years gaining strength before it was discovered in
1988, Dr Crofts said.

The battle against hepatitis C would therefore require a greater effort than
the battle against HIV, he said.

It is believed about 190,000 Australians have hepatitis C, with about
145,000 of them thought to be chronically infected. In 1997, there were
about 11,000 new hepatitis C infections.