[The role of a new syringe filter in harm reduction: the views of active injection drug users]

Reducing the risks associated with drug injection is a core component of the Drug Harm Reduction Policy. In France, this strategy was implemented in the context of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Unless appropriate hygienic precautions are taken, injecting drugs may cause infectious, bacterial or fungal diseases. French Health authorities promote the use of effective tools to help reduce the harm associated with drug injection. In this context, public authorities supported the evaluation of new drug injection paraphernalia. Two qualitative studies were carried out among injection drug users in order to assess the acceptability of new tools disseminated on an experimental basis. The main objective of the evaluation was to identify the criteria governing the adoption or rejection of injection paraphernalia. This paper focuses on the acceptability of a specific syringe filter which is a decisive tool to reduce the harm associated with drug injection. The results show that drug users accept or refuse to change their injecting behaviour depending on specific criteria not entirely associated with public health concerns. The information from these studies suggests that strategies designed to reduce the harm associated with drug injection must be based on these individual criteria and should provide personalized and long-lasting assistance.

Monitoring quality and coverage of harm reduction services for people who use drugs: a consensus study

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Despite advances in our knowledge of effective services for people who use drugs over the last decades globally, coverage remains poor in most countries, while quality is often unknown. This paper aims to discuss the historical development of successful epidemiological indicators and to present a framework for extending them with additional indicators of coverage and quality of harm reduction services, for monitoring and evaluation at international, national or subnational levels. The ultimate aim is to improve these services in order to reduce health and social problems among people who use drugs, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, crime and legal problems, overdose (death) and other morbidity and mortality.

METHODS AND RESULTS

The framework was developed collaboratively using consensus methods involving nominal group meetings, review of existing quality standards, repeated email commenting rounds and qualitative analysis of opinions/experiences from a broad range of professionals/experts, including members of civil society and organisations representing people who use drugs. Twelve priority candidate indicators are proposed for opioid agonist therapy (OAT), needle and syringe programmes (NSP) and generic cross-cutting aspects of harm reduction (and potentially other drug) services. Under the specific OAT indicators, priority indicators included 'coverage', 'waiting list time', 'dosage' and 'availability in prisons'. For the specific NSP indicators, the priority indicators included 'coverage', 'number of needles/syringes distributed/collected', 'provision of other drug use paraphernalia' and 'availability in prisons'. Among the generic or cross-cutting indicators the priority indicators were 'infectious diseases counselling and care', 'take away naloxone', 'information on safe use/sex' and 'condoms'. We discuss conditions for the successful development of the suggested indicators and constraints (e.g. funding, ideology). We propose conducting a pilot study to test the feasibility and applicability of the proposed indicators before their scaling up and routine implementation, to evaluate their effectiveness in comparing service coverage and quality across countries.

CONCLUSIONS

The establishment of an improved set of validated and internationally agreed upon best practice indicators for monitoring harm reduction service will provide a structural basis for public health and epidemiological studies and support evidence and human rights-based health policies, services and interventions.