Chooper's Guide ... the Internet's most comprehensive substance abuse treatment, prevention and intervention resource directory.

Report documents success of state needle exchange program


Overview

Originally Published: 12/04/2014

Post Date: 12/09/2014

Source Publication: Click here

Similar Articles: See the similar article

by Laura Nahmias


Summary/Abstract

ALBANY—Syringe exchange programs in New York State have led to a dramatic drop in new H.I.V infections among intravenous drug users over the past two decades, virtually eradicating the incidence of AIDS transmission through contaminated needles, according to a report quietly released by the state’s AIDS Institute.

The report, which is dated from March of this year, touts the success of the state’s 20-year old syringe exchange program, which is described as “one of the most successful H.I.V. prevention initiatives of the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute.”

Content

The 34-page report describes syringe exchange as “the one intervention which could be described as the gold standard of HIV prevention.” (The word “one” is underlined). Intravenous drug users were among the most at-risk populations for contracting AIDS in the earliest years of the epidemic. In 1992, 52 percent of newly diagnosed AIDS cases in New York were among I.V. drug users.


By 2012, intravenous drug users accounted for only 3 percent of new H.I.V. diagnoses.

That “dramatic decline” is “primarily attributable” to syringe exchange programs, the report concluded.

The report is part of the Cuomo administration's public initiative, announced earlier this year, to end new H.I.V./AIDS infections statewide by 2020. But its findings haven’t been widely disseminated.

The report was published last spring, just as New York State officials including Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Governor Andrew Cuomo began to focus efforts on what they characterized as a new statewide heroin and opioid epidemic.


The report, which examined the two decades' worth of data, showed that 171,582 people had enrolled in the needle exchange programs between 1992 and September 2013. Those people were mostly male, over age 50 and Hispanic. The program had distributed 55.2 million syringes and collected more than 43.4 million used needles during the 21-year period.

 

The report also said New Yorkers who exchanged used needles often walked away with referrals for other kinds of health care services, including drug treatment programs. The report also concluded that needle exchanges save the state money in the long term.

 

Each H.I.V. infection prevented through the syringe exchange had saved the state $37,969 in health costs, according to calculations made by researchers at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Chemical Dependency Institute.

 

But despite the program’s success, needle exchanges “remain controversial,” the report said. Anti-drug advocates fear the programs condone drug abuse and worry they could undermine treatment programs that stress abstinence only drug prevention programs.


The report said lingering stigma against needle exchange programs has hampered efforts to fund the program, despite widely available data showing how well the exchanges work, the report said. And the state can’t seek funding from the federal government.

 

Congress banned the use of the federal funds for syringe exchange programs in 1988, then lifted the ban briefly in 2009 before reinstating it again in 2011.

 

“The ban significantly hampers a wider adoption of an effective intervention needed in the fight against HIV and viral hepatitis,” the report said.

 

New York’s needle exchange program was implemented in 1992 after years of fervent campaigning by AIDS activists groups such as ACT UP.

 

In the report, members of New York’s AIDS Institute acknowledged the debt the program’s survival owed to the activists who’d fought for it in the early years of the epidemic.

 

“Special recognition is extended to the activists who, in the early days of the epidemic, when H.I.V. was often a death sentence, would not accept “no” for an answer,” the report’s authors wrote in an introduction. “They risked much, extending a lifeline to injection drug users, and many became frontline service providers within their communities. On behalf of all New Yorkers, we extend our sincere appreciation for making a difference in the lives of so many.”

See report here: http://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/aids/providers/reports/docs/sep_report.pdf

 


 

Comments