Needle Exchange

A San Francisco task force charged with devising strategies for reducing Hepatitis C infections has recommended making the city the first in the U.S. with a drop-in center where intravenous drug users can obtain needles and shoot up.

Twenty one percent of the 375 tons of heroin produced from Afghanistan's opium fields now finds its way through central Asia into Russia, according to the United Nations. Unlike most countries around the world, Russia refuses to finance harm reduction programs such as needle exchanges, or to legalize methadone. Over the past few months, Moscow has decided to discontinue the work of foreign donors and NGOs with heroin addicts. Critics go as far as to accuse Moscow of willfully neglecting its citizens and thereby fueling what the World Health Organization says is one of the fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemics in the world.

Russia has one of the fastest spreading HIV epidemics in the world, driven largely by the government's refusal to institute measures to treat the country's drug addicts — measures that have dramatically reduced HIV infections in drug addicts in other countries, including the U.S.

A string of academics, health experts and former politicians have lent their names in support of a trial of a needle and syringe program in Australian correctional facilities.

If a Montreal needle exchange has its way, Quebec will soon become the second Canadian province to offer a safe-injection site — whether the provincial government wants it or not. Cactus Montreal, announced last week that it will offer IV drug users space to inject drugs under medical supervision at their office on Ste-Catherine E. and Sanguinet. Their goal is to reduce HIV and hepatitis C infection and prevent accidental overdose deaths.

Injection drug addicts are at much greater risk of catching and spreading disease in the Fraser Health region because health authority officials have failed to deliver on the promise of their harm reduction policy, reform advocates charge. They say access to needle exchanges, safe injection sites and methadone clinics is much poorer than in the Vancouver area – largely due to opposition from hostile city councils and police forces who think an abstinence policy is best.

Switzerland's innovative policy of providing drug addicts with free methadone and clean needles has greatly reduced deaths while cutting crime rates and should serve as a global model, health experts said. Countries whose drug policy remains focused on punishing offenders, including Russia and much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, should learn from a Swiss strategy based on "harm reduction" that protects both users and communities, they said.

The Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland runs Ohio's only legal syringe exchange program. Cleveland first allowed syringe exchanges in 1995, when more than 17 percent of new HIV infections were associated with intravenous drug use. Last year, that number had fallen to 3.4 percent, according to the Cleveland Department of Public Health.