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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3352 ..

MS TUCKER: I move:

It is with pleasure that I table today the report of the Standing Committee on Health Access to needles and syringes for intravenous drug users. I'll also acknowledge, and express the appreciation of the committee for, the work done by Lesley Wheeler and Siobhan Leyne as the secretaries of this committee inquiry. This inquiry took a slightly unusual course.

We had a public forum in the reception room here in the Legislative Assembly at which people-various stakeholders-spoke about their understanding of the issues relating to access to needles and syringes and injecting equipment. It was a very well-attended forum. We recorded it and the transcript is available. It was a very interesting way of getting an understanding of what the issues were. It worked really well because just about everyone who was there had particular expertise or experience of the issues, so it was a very well-informed gathering. The committee, I think, was very impressed with it as a process and I think we'll use it again.

The committee decided to look at this issue because of concerns that there were problems for some injecting drug users in accessing clean syringes and injecting equipment. There are obviously serious public health implications if such access is restricted-namely, the spread of blood-borne diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. Both these diseases are non-vaccine preventable diseases without cures and can lead to death in many cases, as well as considerable engagement with the health system. In particular, HCV or hepatitis C is easily transmitted, not only through syringes, but other injecting equipment and also just through drug users' behaviour. The World Health Organisation estimates HCV prevalence in Australian intravenous drug users to be between 60 per cent and 80 per cent.

We know that Australia's harm-reduction approach has been extremely successful. For example, in New York City, which has a population about the same as New South Wales, there were 17,000 paediatric cases of AIDS compared to 42 in New South Wales. The paediatric cases of AIDS in New York City were in most cases the direct result of one or another parent being an intravenous drug user. The Commonwealth government's report Return on investment in needle and syringe programs in Australia found that, in relation to HIV, a total of $7,025 million was saved due to approximately 25,000 cases of HIV being avoided. In relation to HCV, the costs avoided are estimated at $783 million due to approximately 21,000 cases of HCV being avoided.

The report also saw that internationally, HCV prevalence in cities with needle and syringe programs was 37 per cent lower than in cities without needle and syringe programs. While this shows that Australia is taking the right approach and has made significant impact on HIV, there is growing concern about the spread of HCV. The Hepatitis C Council told the committee that there are an estimated 5,000 people living with hepatitis C in the ACT-a 45 per cent increase over the past four years. At the current rate of growth, one million Australians will have HCV by 2020. So reducing the occurrence of new infections is a key challenge.

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