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Drug injection trends among participants in the Australian Needle and Syringe Program Survey, 2012-2016

image - Bulletin 0
Author: Sonja Memedovic, Jenny Iversen, Lisa Maher

Resource Type: Drug Trends Bulletins

The collaboration of Australian Needle and Syringe Programs has conducted annual sentinel surveillance of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibody prevalence and associated risk behaviours among PWID since 1995. Each year during a one to two week period, all clients attending selected Needle and Syringe Programs (NSPs) are invited to participate in the Australian NSP Survey (ANSPS) by completing a brief selfadministered survey and providing a finger stick capillary blood sample. The ANSPS methodology is described in detail elsewhere (Iversen, Wand, Topp, Kaldor & Maher, 2013) and ANSPS samples are representative of the broader NSP client population (Topp et al, 2008). This Drug Trends Bulletin supplement reports national and jurisdictional trends from the ANSPS for the period 2012 to 2016.

Over the past five years the number of participating NSP services ranged from from 47 to 52, the number of respondents ranged from 2210 to 2407 and the response rate ranged from 41% to 48% (2012-2016, Table 1).