Clean Needles save Lives - Needle exchange in the us - Sub - Eng, rus, spa, hun

After two decades, the United States congress has voted to lift the ban on the federal funding of needle exchange programs. This finally allows organisations providing this harm reduction service to apply for federal funds. This short movie explains why and how needle exchange programs save lives and protect communities. Can you define what a needle exchange is and how it protects communities? Syringe exchange arose out of the *** epidemic that emerged among injection drug users. Injection drug users were sharing contaminated syringes and other injection equipment. So syringe exchange is an opportunity for a drug user to get clean, sterile new syringes and to dispose of their old, used syringes. That becomes a way in which we can establish contact with drug users, who traditionally are outside of all kinds of social services, and begin to build a relationship. People come in and they all have a code. I get the code from them and enter it into the AIRS (AIDS Institute Data Reporting System). I ask them if they are returning any. This is where used syringes go If you are using a syringe exchange you are not sharing needles, you are getting fresh, clean needles and you are disposing of them properly. So you don’t have to worry about no one stepping on them or them being in parks, or being in places they shouldn’t be. You’re putting 50 in, right? Yes. How many would you like? 50. Back in the mid 80s, New York City was known as the epicentre for *** and injection drug use in the world. More than 50% of the drug users in New York – there were about 200 thousand of them – had AIDS. You didn’t really have *** in those days, know one knew what *** was, you had AIDS. The New York City Department of Health began to investigate starting a syringe exchange in New York City, back in 1986. Now we have about 17 programs in New York City that supply syringes to drug users and it has had an enormous impact. As I said, over 50% of our drug users had AIDS in the late 80s and now it’s down to under 10%. And that is solely because of the impact of syringe exchange. 5-10% of people who inject drugs in this country are accessing syringe exchange programs, which would translate to maybe 50-100 thousand people a year. We’re probably in the rage of 25 million syringes going out through syringe exchange programs in any given year. …3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... I benefited personally from using needle exchange services in the fact that I was able to obtain clean syringes and use them without being a danger to myself – by damaging my skin or re-injecting materials from a used syringe – and I was able to live a healthier life. I am healthier now than I have ever been in my life. When I was active, shooting heroine and ***, I came here to get my syringes and I credit that for saving me from STDs, AIDS and everything. We’re talking about a quarter of a million dollars on upwards, for every case of ***, for lifelong medical costs; whereas the cost of a syringe is more in the realm of a dime, 10 cents. So if you’re looking at cost-effectiveness, obviously investing in prevention is going to save you a lot of money. I grew up around injectors. My mother and father were both injectors for the vast majority of my life, early life. My mother is co-infected, so I feel very connected to this movement. I believe that if harm reduction had been around as a principle, or if an organisation like this had been around, she wouldn’t be having to deal with the diseases she’s dealing with now. And more importantly, I wish people had treated her with the respect that we make our trademark here. What are the other services that syringe exchanges provide for drug users? Through the syringe exchange, you can begin to build things into drugs users’ lives that they were previously not associated with: medical care, getting people into medical systems, mental health care, because mental health is a serious and major issue – often – for people who use drugs, and are maybe living on the street. We provide a lot of support groups for people. We can do a lot of *** testing, STD testing. We can do a lot of TB testing and provide medications for both managing people’s *** and managing their tuberculosis. We are beyond just a needle exchange. I think we look at the drug user – we have a more holistic approach. It’s not just the harms associated with using drugs but the harms associated with being poor and homeless, or being hungry – are social determinates of health that we really miss out on. Also, needle exchanges are also a lot of times staffed by users themselves. So they are the experts. They have groups here. One was hepatitis C. I suspected I had it and I enrolled in a group and they hooked me up with a doctor and the doctor put me on Interferon and now my viral load is very low. This is our overdose prevention kit. We hold trainings for our participants on Tuesdays and Fridays. So they can be able to carry this and save a life of someone they’re injecting with or vice versa, someone can save their life. It comes with two alcohol swabs. This is the magic formula that reverses the *** overdose. This is what happens in each kit: we give two of each just to be sure. This is a muscle shot, not a vein shot and gloves, for sanitary reasons and if it comes to that, rescue breathing, which is part of the training. We give them a quick knowledge of it. The fact that many people think that syringe exchange empowers people to use drugs is a myth. First of all, it’s a well known fact that drug use will occur whether we have syringe exchanges or not. What we are propagating is that we want people to use safely and not spread disease or do harm to themselves or others: their community or their family members and everybody who can be affected by it. If an individual is going to use, they’re going to use. But they’re not going to use any more or any less - If an individual chooses to use more drugs, that’s a conscious choice that they make, whatever the situation may be - But they’re not going to do that due to the fact that someone is giving them a syringe. And, an individual that does not use a syringe, is not going to just pick up a syringe and say “oh, let me try a syringe because there’s a syringe exchange in the area.” A lot of the people I’ve worked with previously, when I ran a needle exchange program had been to drug treatment many, many, many times. If it worked and if it was that simple, they wouldn’t have been coming back. Once people slowed down around a chaotic drug scene, perhaps they could begin to strategize about what else they wanted to do with their lives, and begin to think about what their drug use means to them, and how they might want to change their relationship to the drugs they use. So there’re people always available at syringe exchange programs to provide counselling, and case management. One of the things that I learnt very quickly from doing needle exchange is that people came for needles, but that was the first step. They asked for other things and one of the big things they asked for was help with drug treatment. Long standing syringe exchange programs have not had community opposition. Any kind of fears the community have begin to go away after a while, when they begin to in see the benefits. The ways that *** is transmitted, link all of us together. Even though the proportion of people in the United States who inject drugs is relatively small – you know, in the ballpark of a million people - what happens to their health is important to all of us. Subtitles: Arielle Reid, Tamás Kardos, István Gábor Takács �