ALLEGHENY COUNTY HEALTH BOARD SUPPORTS CONTINUING NEEDLE EXCHANGE

The Allegheny County Board of Health has drafted a regulation to
continue a privately funded needle exchange program to help stem the
spread of HIV and hepatitis C.

The program was started four years ago and provides clean syringes
and needles to intravenous drug users.

"The board felt there was enough experience now that we could put a
draft regulation together," said county health Director Dr. Bruce
Dixon after yesterday's health board meeting.

"It's certainly a move towards making us a permanent program," said
Renee Cox, executive director of privately funded Prevention Point
Pittsburgh, which runs the program.

The exchange program has recently been scrutinized by County Council
partly because of concerns that it was operating outside of a state
law that criminalizes possession of needles without a prescription.

According to the proposed regulation, the Health Department would
devise operating procedures for needle programs in municipalities and
the health board "shall have the sole authority to approve" them. It
also states that no one who isn't part of a sanctioned exchange
program can give drug users injection apparatus without a doctor's
prescription.

A public comment period will be held on the regulation, and the board
is expected to vote on it at its July meeting.

Dr. Dixon noted that Prevention Point's program might have to find a
new site by fall because the county Health Department will need its
space back at its Oakland headquarters.

Ms. Cox told the board that Prevention Point had been given a used
van from a needle exchange program in Philadelphia and was renovating
it for use in the summer. It could be used to provide services in
more communities and enhance outreach to African-American injectors.

Between April 2002 and the end of 2005, Prevention Point has
registered about 3,200 participants and more than a third of program
participants are between the ages of 18 and 25.

Nine out of 10 are white, but research shows that African-American
intravenous drug users are five times more likely to become infected
with HIV than white injectors, Ms. Cox said.

"It is one of our goals to connect with that population in the
future," she noted.

Prevention Point has referred nearly 650 people to drug treatment.
None of the 210 people who had HIV testing had the infection, but 101
out of 209, or 48 percent, who got tested were hepatitis C positive,
Ms. Cox said.

The program also provides overdose prevention education. Also,
exchange participants can get from doctor volunteers prescriptions
for naloxone, or Narcan, a drug used to treat certain kinds of overdoses.

"Over 60 individuals have received prescriptions and [we] have had
firsthand reports of 17 lives saved as a result," Ms. Cox said.

Prevention Point has enough funding to continue its overdose
component until July. It doesn't have sufficient financial support to
maintain a supply of sterile needles.

"We struggle from year to year trying to secure funding to keep our
program operational," she said.

Ms. Cox and her colleagues are also working with local researchers to
form an evaluation committee to monitor the program's effectiveness.

In other business yesterday, Dr. Dixon told the health board about
discussions to obtain funding from the state Health Department for
construction of a new laboratory building.

"We are still discussing with the county as to whether or not it
would be in the Strip District, where their proposal was, or whether
it would be in this facility" on the county's Lawrenceville campus, he said.

Last week, a motorist accidentally crashed into the department's lab
in Oakland, creating a large hole in the building. The proposed lab,
which would have the ability to handle some bioterror agents, might
be more vulnerable in the Strip, Dr. Dixon said.

"There is some advantage to putting it on [the Lawrenceville] site
because there's a buffer around it," he said. "You'd have to drive
across grass and through another building to get to it."