NC Syringe Access
Dear Friends and Colleagues, and Community Members;
The
purpose of this petition is to advocate for syringe exchange programs (SEPs) to
legally operate in the state of North Carolina. In addition, we are fighting
for the rights of SEP participants to receive life saving materials and
information without being persecuted by law enforcement.
North
Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC) is proactively working with a
collaborative of community based organization and legislators to introduce a bill
to the North Carolina House of Representatives. To garner support in the House,
the NCHRC will present these signatures to legislators in Raleigh on May 25,
2010 allowing your voice to be heard.
SEPs
benefit all Carolinians. They stop the spread of HIV and Viral Hepatitis and
have a cost Benet rate of 16 to 1, which can save the state money during these
tough financial times. SEPs are proven to: 1) decrease overall community
drug use, 2) decrease HIV & Hepatitis incidence, 3) provide free syringes
to diabetics, 4) decrease needle stick injuries to police by 66%, and 5)
provide a gateway to drug treatment. We are calling for North
Carolina to legalize SEPs. North Carolina has over 25,000 injection
drug using people who do not have access to a stable supply of clean syringes.
This leads to the sharing of syringes, which has contributed to over 35,000
cumulative HIV cases and 150,000 Hepatitis C infections in the State.
More than half of the HIV/AIDS population
in North Carolina has became infected by sharing contaminated needles, or
having sex with someone who did. In addition, North Carolina is in the
midst of a new epidemic of Hepatitis C. The current estimated lifetime cost of
care for someone living with HIV is $618,000 and $100,000 for persons
living with Hepattis C. Restricting access to sterile syringes is
not only bad public health policy, it is bad economic policy. North
Carolina has spent, and will continue to spend hundreds of millions of
dollars on medical costs to treat injection-related HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C
infections that could have been prevented by access to sterile
syringes.
This is a public health
issue where science strongly supports policy. We have attached links to recent
reviews of SEPs and published studies for your reference. This review, backed
by the CDC and American Medical Association among others all conclude that SEPs
prevent HIV and Viral Hepatitis, that they are cost-effective, and do not
increase drug use (see links below).
· Research on the cost effectiveness of syringe access has consistently shown that not only does syringe access save lives—it saves
money.
· A recent report from the Australian Government found that cities
that introduced syringe access programs had a mean annual 18.6% decrease
in HIV seroprevalence, compared with a mean annual 8.1% increase in cities
that did not introduce syringe access programs. The national savings from
combined HIV and hepatitis C cases averted totaled almost 800 million
dollars.
· A report by the HIV
Health and Human Services Planning Council of New York City found that if
a public health program that offered syringe exchange services prevented just
two new HIV infections a year, the program would be cost effective.
· A report on the cost effectiveness of a syringe access program in
Alberta, Canada found that there was a cost effectiveness ratio of less
than $10,000 per HIV case averted, well below the then-current
lifetime HIV care cost of $150,000.
A clean needle costs about 7¢.
Lifetime AIDS treatment costs approximately
$618,000
Lifetime Hepatitis C treatment costs
approximately $100,000
Lifetime costs for a Liver Transplant due to
Hepatitis C $400,000
The math is simple. So is the
solution.
Links to position papers that discuss the evidence
behind and unanimously support syringe exchange programs:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
-
American Medical Association (AMA)
- American Nurses Association (ANA)
- Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC)
- National Association of Social Workers (NASW)
-
American Bar Association (ABA)
- National Science Foundation (NSF), Institute of Medicine
(IOM)
The
bottom line: CLEAN NEEDLES SAVE LIVES
Please take a moment to review the information that
unanimously supports the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs.
Comment