A needle in the haystack – the dire straits of needle exchange in Hungary

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Róbert Csák¹  Mónika Varga²  Nóra Csiszér²  V. Anna Gyarmathy³  István Vingender⁴  Katalin Bálint⁴  András Ernő Varga⁴  Eszter Bene⁴  József Rácz⁵ 

[1] Blue Point Drug Counselling and Outpatient Centre, Budapest, Hungary;Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Psychology, Budapest, Hungary;Drug Prevention Foundation, Budapest, Hungary;Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA;Semmelweis University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Budapest, Hungary;Semmelweis University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Budapest, Hungary;Semmelweis University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Budapest, Hungary;Blue Point Drug Counselling and Outpatient Centre, Budapest, Hungary;Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Psychology, Budapest, Hungary;

关键词: People who inject drugs;    Harm reduction;    Needle exchange;    Drug policy;    Hungary;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-016-2842-2

 received in 2015-08-13, accepted in 2016-02-05,  发布年份 2016

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe two largest needle exchange programs (NEPs) in Hungary were forced to close down in the second half of 2014 due to extreme political attacks and related lack of government funding. The closures occurred against a background of rapid expansion in Hungary of injectable new psychoactive substances, which are associated with very frequent injecting episodes and syringe sharing. The aim of our analysis was to predict how the overall Hungarian NEP syringe supply was affected by the closures.MethodsWe analyzed all registry data from all NEPs in Hungary for all years of standardized NEP data collection protocols currently in use (2008–2014) concerning 22 949 client enrollments, 9 211 new clients, 228 167 client contacts, 3 160 560 distributed syringes, and 2 077 676 collected syringes.ResultsWe found that while the combined share of the two now closed NEPs decreased over time, even in their partial year 2014 they still distributed and collected about half of all syringes, and attended to over half of all clients and client contacts in Hungary. The number of distributed syringes per PWID (WHO minimum target = 100) was 81 in 2014 in Hungary, but 39 without the two now closed NEPs.ConclusionsThere is a high probability that the combination of decreased NEP coverage and the increased injection risk of new psychoactive substances may lead in Hungary to a public health disaster similar to the HIV outbreaks in Romania and Greece. This can be avoided only by an immediate change in the attitude of the Hungarian government towards harm reduction.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Gyarmathy et al. 2016