The Middlesex-London Health Unit in Ontario plans to expand their clean needle program in an effort to address climbing HIV rates and a higher-than-provincial rate of Hepatitis C in the city, by asking pharmacies to dispense clean needles and accept used ones.
“What we are trying to do here is prevent harm from injection,” said acting medical officer of health Dr. Gayane Hovhannisyan.
“Extensive research has been done. Giving access to needles is not going to be increasing injection drug use behaviours, people are going to be injecting no matter what.”
The Health Unit gave out three million clean needles last year. Hovhannisyan hopes to contain and control the epidemic by increasing the availability and access to harm reduction supplies.
She says Hep C rates have been higher in London for the past five to six years, while 70 per cent of new cases of Hep C and HIV are injection drug-users.
“We have interested pharmacists calling us, and we know that this type of approach works. It worked in other types of jurisdictions so we hope that it will work here as well.”
Hovhannisyan says the Health Unit hopes to get pharmacists who already give out Naloxone and opioid maintenance drugs to participate in the expanded program.
It’s estimated there are about 6,000 people in London who inject illicit drugs.
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