Opportunistic and continuing health care for injecting drug users from a nurse-run needle syringe program-based primary health-care clinic.

摘要

Needle syringe programs (NSPs) are an important point of contact with injecting drug users (IDUs) and can play a crucial role in the provision of essential health care. Accordingly, in some parts of the world, NSPs have been enhanced to offer low-threshold primary health-care services [1].These enhanced NSPs typically provide non-judgemental and often anonymous services allowing clients to access harm minimisation, primary health care, welfare services and referrals for other health care. This model of care has not been widely adopted in Australia, in part because: (i) this is a relatively new model of health care with limited published evidence of effectiveness [2]; (ii) belief that IDUs, like the general population, have adequate access to health care under the universal health insurance system; (iii) the notion that harm reduction should be limited to delivery of sterile injecting equipment and that primary health care is a separate issue; and (iv) cross-organisational barriers and administrative constraints.