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LETTERS: Andrew Byrne and Kate Dolan Methadone treatment is widely accepted in prisons in New South Wales BMJ 1998; 316: 1744a [Full text]

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Emulating Community Drug Treatments In Victorian Prisons - Seemingly Uacceptable

Steve Simpson   (20 January 1999)

Emulating Community Drug Treatments In Victorian Prisons - Seemingly Uacceptable 20 January 1999
Steve Simpson, Counsellor / Program Advisor Barkly Street Medical Centre / Melb Assessment Prison Send response to journal: Re: Emulating Community Drug Treatments In Victorian Prisons - Seemingly Uacceptable	EDITOR - In my role as a Peer Program Advisor (Infection Control, Harm Minimisation)and as a D&A Counsellor at the Barkly Street Medical Centre in Melbourne, where we have over 700 methadone and 300 naltrexone patients I wonder at our prison system. We have no maintenance program of methadone, no needle exchange and have disallowed inmates continuing on naltrexone programs on entry to prison. But we do provide harm minimisation sessions, mandatory HIV, Hepatitis sessions and bleach for injecting equipment. Even if we are to go some way in providing similar medical treatment as that provided in the community we should at least allow maitenance of both methadone and the more recent naltrexone programs. Some BSMC patients were going to prison on naltrexone and then being denied further treatment, what happens if one of these patients lapses and we have an overdose death? is there not a duty of care? Prisoners families were funding this medication that constitutes an abstinence program, surely this should be emulated in prison, and also the methadone maintenance as described by Byrne and Dolan. Steve Simpson, Counsellor Barkly Street Medical Centre 60 Barkly Street ST Kilda, 3182 Victoria Australia