Supervised injecting centres

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7431.100

BMJ 2004;328:100-102 (10 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7431.100

Education and debate

Supervised injecting centres

Nat M J Wright, general practitioner consultant in substance misuse and homelessness¹, Charlotte N E Tompkins, research assistant²

¹ Centre for Research in Primary Care, Leeds, LS2 9PL, ² North East Leeds Primary Care Trust, Leeds LS6 2HF

Correspondence to: N M J Wright n.wright@leeds.ac.uk

The case for piloting supervised injecting centres in the UnitedKingdom is strong

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Medically supervised injecting centres are "legally sanctionedand supervised facilities designed to reduce the health andpublic order problems associated with illegal injection druguse."¹ Their purpose is to enable the consumption of pre-obtaineddrugs under hygienic, low risk conditions (box).¹ They differfrom illegal "shooting galleries," where users pay to injecton site.² Worldwide, medically supervised injecting centres(also referred to as health rooms, supervised injecting rooms,drug consumption rooms, and safer injecting rooms or facilities)are receiving renewed attention. In 2001, the first medicallysupervised injecting centre in recent times was opened in Sydney,Australia. By 2002, there were 16 centres in five German cities,³over 20 in the Netherlands, and some in Switzerland and Spain.⁴

The UK Home Affairs Select Committee recently recommended "thatan evaluated pilot programme of safe injecting houses for heroinusers is established without delay and that if this is successful,the programme . . . [Full text of this article]

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