Dr Alex Wodak writes for the October 2017 IDHDP Newsletter

The restrictions which many European countries impose on free/reimbursed access to hepatitis C virus (HCV) direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) are contrary to guidelines and undermine the World Health Organization (WHO) goal to eliminate HCV as a major public health concern, new research suggests.

Sharing of equipment used for injecting drug use (IDU) is a substantial cause of disease burden and a contributor to blood-borne virus transmission. We did a global multistage systematic review to identify the prevalence of IDU among people aged 15–64 years; sociodemographic characteristics of and risk factors for people who inject drugs (PWID); and the prevalence of HIV, hepatitis C virus (HCV), and hepatitis B virus (HBV) among PWID.

Background paper commissioned by the EMCDDA for Health and social responses to drug problems: a European guide

The government acknowledges in the strategy that the rise in drug related deaths is “dramatic and tragic” but proposes no concrete action plan to reduce them.

There is a clear trend of increasing deaths among older people with a drug problem in Scotland. This cohort are categorised as people aged over 35 who experience health and social harms related to his/her own use of drugs. As this cohort is likely to grow in size over the next five years in Scotland, the scope of this rapid evidence review was to respond to the specific risks and needs identified for this group of people. This report provides a synthesis of findings from the evidence based on the critical appraisal of systematic reviews and grey literature reports.

How the agreed UN language on drug control has evolved and developed over the last quarter of a century. To this end, this paper explores a selection of key themes by analysing the consensus-based language agreed by UN member states.

As an alliance of nine organisations and networks we work towards the end of the AIDS epidemic among key populations together with more than 70 grassroots organisations. To get there we envision a society where sex workers, LGBT people and people who use drugs have their human rights fully respected.

To estimate the effects of needle syringe programmes (NSP) and opioid substitution therapy (OST), alone or in combination, for preventing acquisition of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) in people who inject drugs (PWID).

This report investigates and details the health-related harms, stigma and discrimination, service access and adherence barriers, as well as the impact of current (if existing) harm reduction strategies among PLHIV who use drugs.

The crackdown on pain medication prescribing is intended to help the addiction crisis—but it’s leaving chronic pain patients in untenable situations.

The EDR 2017 provides no evidence that there is a public health problem from the prescription of opioid analgesics to pain patients in the countries it covers.

NDP leadership Jagmeet Singh’s decriminalization proposal, while politically bold, reflects a view that is relatively uncontroversial among public health experts. (DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

A Stocktake Review of DFID’s Work on HIV and AIDS

“In the middle of us continuing mass incarceration and a tough war on drugs we are having the worst drug epidemic in US history. If these policies actually worked we would never had this epidemic, let alone the worst one ever. Yet here we are….” – German Lopez, Vox

Nowhere is the divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, where too often emotions and ideology rather than evidence have prevailed.

The burden of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is escalating among people who inject drugs (PWID), yet testing and treatment remains suboptimal. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions to enhance HCV testing, linkage to care, and treatment uptake among PWID.

This special issue published in the International Journal of Drug Policy includes original research articles, systematic and expert reviews, and commentaries focused on the “Elimination of hepatitis C virus infection among PWID: the beginning of a new era of interferon-free DAA therapy”.

Delivering direct acting antiviral therapy for hepatitis C to highly marginalised and current drug injecting populations in a targeted primary health care setting

Healthcare professionals are crucial in the identification and accessibility to treatment for people with substance use disorders. Our objective was to assess health professionals’ attitudes towards patients with substance use disorders and examine the consequences of these attitudes on healthcare delivery for these patients in Western countries.

Risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) occurrence or recurrence following direct-acting antiviral (DAA) HCV therapy remains unclear. This study however concludes there is no evidence to support withholding DAA therapy in patients with HCV-related cirrhosis or after curative HCC management.

US opioid overdose death rates have increased between 2000 and 2014. This study documents the differences in trends in prescription opioid overdose-related (POD) and heroin overdose related (HOD) hospitalizations.

"Do we really have a right to deny the evidence and refuse to provide a proven treatment that will help those in need?"

People with opioid use disorder (OUD) in prison face an acute risk of death after release. We estimated whether prison-based opioid substitution treatment (OST) reduces this risk.

Women’s deaths as a result of drug misuse have increased by a staggering 82 per cent in England and Wales over the last decade.

The use of inappropriate language and words can be a barrier to access to medicines for the legitimate use of opioids, such as treatment of pain and opioid dependence.

A ground-breaking review provides stark evidence of the damage criminalisation has on preventing and treating HIV among people who inject drugs.

In 1993 what was at the time Britain’s magazine for the drug misuse sector alerted readers to an invisible “sleeping giant” – hepatitis C.

Portugal treats addiction as a disease, not a crime. Op-Ed Columnist, NY Times

The supply of heroin into the US has changed with new source forms and market strategies. Of particular concern is the rampant and persistent adulteration of heroin with synthetic opioids, most conspicuously the family of fentanyls.