Hep C policies failing as drug users fall ill: [5 Travel Edition]
Stapleton, John. Weekend Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 10 Mar 2007: 27.
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Abstract
"We had no idea it was going to be this high," said professor Lisa Maher from the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research based at theUniversity of NSW. The team studied more than 200 addicts who were either younger than 30 or who had been injecting for fewer than three years, in Sydney's south-west. They found that for every 100 new users followed for a year, 46 became infected with hepatitis C.
Another study shows that one in three inmates of Australian prisons has hepatitis C. A sample of prisoners from NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia returned rates of 34 per cent, with infection numbers almost double this among inmates who regularly injected drugs before being jailed.
DESPITE more than two decades of harm minimisation policies and the ready availability of free syringes, Australia's heroin addicts have some of the highest hepatitis C rates in the world and one- third of prisoners have the potentially deadly virus, according to two new studies.
Sydney has outstripped London's alarming rates of infection, with a NSW research team warning that half of all new users contract the virus within three years and the "extremely high" numbers need the urgent attention of Australian policy makers.
"We had no idea it was going to be this high," said professor Lisa Maher from the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research based at theUniversity of NSW. The team studied more than 200 addicts who were either younger than 30 or who had been injecting for fewer than three years, in Sydney's south-west. They found that for every 100 new users followed for a year, 46 became infected with hepatitis C.
Rates were highest among women, those under 20, people originally from South East Asia, cocaine injectors and those using for less than a year.
Maher says the statistics, published in the February issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, paint a grim picture of rates in NSW. They exceed London, which recently recorded a rate of 42 per 100 new users.
"This one of the highest, if not the highest, documented rate of hep C infection in injecting-drug users in the world," Maher said. She says it shows prevention strategies implemented in the late 1980s don't appear to be working. New users appear to pick up the blood-borne disease almost immediately after they start injecting, making the window to help protect them "very, very small", she said.
Another study shows that one in three inmates of Australian prisons has hepatitis C. A sample of prisoners from NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia returned rates of 34 per cent, with infection numbers almost double this among inmates who regularly injected drugs before being jailed.
That study, led by the University of NSW Centre of Health Research in Criminal Justice, tested almost 500 volunteers from a cross-section of Australia's 25,000-strong prison population.
Results showed NSW inmates were "significantly more likely" to test positive to hepatitis C than prisoners in other states. Most sufferers were aged over 30 and had been in prison before.
Lead researcher Tony Butler says the findings show the need for better harm minimisation practices in prisons. Authorities should also consider routinely including prisoners in the national surveillance of hepatitis and HIV, he says.
"That would provide a more complete picture of blood-borne virus epidemiology in Australia."
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