drug users who share needles

I.V. drug users who share needles and/or syringes face a much greater risk of infection than hospital workers who accidentally prick themselves on infected syringes, as the full contents of a syringe is dumped directly into a vein along with the contaminated blood of other users.

One 1987 Australian study indicated that 2% of Australians had injected themselves with a drug at least once in the previous 12 months.[vi] I.V. drug use is the major IV transmission vector aside from anal sex. Three Australian studies showed the rising prevalence of HIV infection in the I.V. dug-using community, based on rates of contaminated syringes. In 1985 the rate was 0.5%; in 1986 the figure was 1% and in 1987 some centers reported a 10% infection rate. These figures could be slightly inflated by the regular return of syringes to needle exchange centers by a few heavy users, but by 1988 one of the centers alone was giving out around 2,500 needles a month in Sydney’s King’s Cross. In February 1988, 10-15% of 1,500 returned needles in three inner-city suburbs were infected.

[vii] “These kids are homeless and routinely take serepax, alcohol, speed, heroin or combinations of all these drugs,” said the director of the King’s Cross Kirketon Road Centre. “They are living very dangerous lives anyway.

“They view AIDS as just one concern and probably not as important as having a full stomach or somewhere to stay. A virus that will not appear for three or four or five years… well, it’s very difficult for them to grasp.”
The New South Wales State Government started a pilot needle exchange at one centre in November 1986. In the first nine months of operation 14,000 needles were handed out, so the scheme was expanded.[viii]

In New York and many other places it’s still (on writing) illegal to for non-insulin users to possess a hypodermic syringe, which has meant that some users hire their used syringes out to other users, often using abandoned buildings as ‘shooting galleries’.

Mainly as a result of such outdated legislation, 1988 figures from the Bronx indicated that half of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 I.V. drug users there may have been infected with HIV.

“A quarter of these AIDS victims are women,” according to Dr Ernst Drucker, an epidemiologist who ran the Montefiore Medical Centre’s community health and drug addiction programmes.

[ix] 1988 New York City Health Department figures show that 52 out of 650 homeless youths under the age of 21 who came to the Covenant House crisis centre were infected with HIV.

“Fifty-two people tested positive, but the most startling statistic we have come up with is that the incidence of antibodies to AIDS among the males and females (in these 52) is exactly the same,” said medical director Dr Jim Kennedy of Covenant House, located two blocks from Times Square.
“What has already happened with AIDS in New York is very interesting. First the incidence of AIDS in gay men has peaked and is going down. The incidence of I.V. drug users getting AIDS is going up and up,” said Dr Kennedy.[x]

The demonstrated prevalence of I>V> drug use in the U.S., Australia and the rest of the developed world shows how easily I.V. drug users can account for most HIV cases classed as ‘heterosexual’ or ‘other/unknown’ (see AIDS – The Heterosexual Myth). When added to the reported and unreported incidence of anal sex and bisexuality (see part 3), most – if not all – cases attributed to possible heterosexual transmission of AIDS are accounted for.