Injecting drug use

Injecting drug use features

• Crystal meth and London gay men – examining the evidence

  Last month the medical journal The Lancet published a news feature, describing an increasing number of London gay men who take methamphetamine (crystal meth), including a significant...

  From:  News

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  Harm reduction and human rights

  Harm reduction for injecting drug users, including clean needles and syringes and opiate substitution therapy, is extremely limited in some regions of the world. Harm reduction...

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

Injecting drug use news from aidsmap

• Crystal meth and London gay men – examining the evidence

  Last month the medical journal The Lancet published a news feature, describing an increasing number of London gay men who take methamphetamine (crystal meth), including a significant number who inject it, often at 'chill-outs' and sex parties. There are ...

  11 February 2013 | Roger Pebody

• Sharing drug preparation equipment a potential source of hepatitis C transmission

  Drug users who share injecting equipment such as water, filters and water containers are potentially putting themselves at risk of infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV), according to German research published in the online edition of the Journal of Infectious ...

  27 November 2012 | Michael Carter

• Opiate substitution therapy halves HIV risk for people who inject drugs

  Opiate substitution therapy reduces the risk of HIV infection by half for individuals who inject drugs, according to the results of a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal. “There is evidence from published and unpublished observational ...

  15 October 2012 | Michael Carter

• Combination prevention approach could have a big impact on HIV epidemic in China

  Increasing rates of HIV testing or expanding the use of antiretroviral therapy will not be enough to eliminate new HIV transmissions in China, according to a mathematical model published in the online edition of AIDS. However, a “combination prevention” approach ...

  07 August 2012 | Michael Carter

• Which interventions are best to reduce HIV infections among drug users?

  HIV infections among drug users currently make up 30% of new infections globally. Their social marginalisation makes them an especially difficult group to target for public health and HIV interventions. Yet researchers, civil society, and drug user organisations are considering ...

  01 August 2012 | Mara Kardas-Nelson

• International AIDS Conference hears how drugs, sex and HIV interlock

  Two sessions at the 19th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) in Washington looked at the way injecting drug use, recreational drug use and unsafe sex interlock to multiply HIV risk, and how new outbreaks of injecting drug use ...

  25 July 2012 | Gus Cairns

• Syringe exchange expansion in United States would be cost-saving

  According to a mathematical analysis presented at the 19th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) in Washington, DC, providing clean syringes to reduce HIV transmission among Americans who inject drugs is considerably less expensive than treating the new cases of HIV ...

  24 July 2012 | Kelly Safreed-Harmon

• Gay and bisexual men who inject drugs more likely to have HIV than other men who inject drugs

  HIV prevalence is four times higher in gay and bisexual men who inject drugs, compared to heterosexual, male, injecting drug users, UK investigators report in Sexually Transmitted Infections. The study also showed that prevalence of infection with the hepatitis ...

  30 May 2012 | Michael Carter

• Professional tattooing in sterile environment not associated with risk of hepatitis C

  Tattooing or body piercing in professional parlours is not associated with an increased risk of infection with hepatitis C virus, a literature review published in the online edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases shows. However, the authors did find evidence that ...

  08 February 2012 | Michael Carter

• Upsurge in HIV diagnoses among IDUs in Greece and Romania - are reduced prevention services the cause?

  New diagnosis and prevalence of HIV increased sharply among injecting drug users in Greece and Romania in 2011, European investigators report. Several other countries in the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) also reported slight increases in diagnoses or ...

  16 January 2012 | Michael Carter

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Injecting drug use news selected from other sources

• The Battle for Needle Exchange, as AIDS Raged

  In the '80s, HIV was killing tens of thousands of heroin addicts. Yet swapping clean needles for dirty ones remained illegal—until a ragtag group of AIDS activists put their bodies on the line.

  14 March 2013 | The Fix

• HIV high on the agenda at the fifty-sixth session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs

  At the fifty-sixth session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which is running from 11-15 March, drug use and HIV will be addressed through a number of channels, including a draft resolution calling for the intensification of efforts to reduce HIV to attain the targets of the 2011 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS.

  13 March 2013 | UNAIDS

• Defusing Scotland's HIV prison timebomb

  Twenty years after Glenochil’s notorious outbreak, Roy Kilpatrick looks at how progress has been made to help inmates.

  11 March 2013 | Herald Scotland

• Heroin and crack use 'plummeting'

  The number of heroin and crack users in England is "plummeting", according to the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse.

  06 March 2013 | BBC Health

• Give needles, condoms to inmates to curb HIV, experts urge

  Giving inmates drug substitution treatment, needles and condoms are key ways to help curb addiction and HIV infection in European jails, experts say, calling on authorities to change their approach to prison health care. "We support opioid substitution treatment and harm reduction measures, including needle exchange programmes. These measures are crucial, otherwise we cannot tackle HIV and other infections in prisons," Stefan Enggist of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said during an international conference on addiction in prisons organised by the Council of Europe this week in Bucharest.

  01 March 2013 | Medical Xpress

• New treatment gives hope to East Africa’s drug users

  The United Republic of Tanzania is the first mainland sub-Saharan country to launch a national methadone programme as part of its battle to fight the twin epidemics of heroin addiction and HIV infection.

  21 February 2013 | Bulletin of the World Health Organization

• Study: One-third of hepatitis B and C cases in Pakistan are preventable

  Approximately one-third of all hepatitis B and C cases in Pakistan could be prevented by interventions directed towards a few modifiable risk factors, according to a recent study.

  14 February 2013 | Vaccine News Daily (blog)

• Making recovery real: the public health future of drug and alcohol treatment

  In October last year, the NTA held a series of events for service providers, commissioners, service users and others on Making Recovery Real: the public health future of drug and alcohol treatment.

  12 February 2013 | National Treatment Agency

• The Evolution of How Drug Injection Equipment Harbors Hep C

  We know that injection drug users represent the single largest risk group for Hepatitis C, but we just recently learned how vulnerable their equipment is.

  06 February 2013 | Hepatitis Central

• Heroin dependence treatment reduces HIV infections in Spain

  Spain’s provision of methadone maintenance treatment for heroin dependence, combined with the distribution of sterile injecting equipment and access to treatment for AIDS, has led to a turnaround in the country’s HIV epidemic, according to a study published this month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

  06 February 2013 | Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques press release

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