As far as I’m concerned…
As far as I’m concerned, a Syringe Exchange Program is only worthwhile if it is offering health services in conjunction with dispensing sterile injection equipment to addicts. The County has such a program, but what else are they offering besides up to 100 syringes per person per visit?
On their monthly reports, at the bottom of those reports, the County has data entries for the number of persons tested for HIV/ HepC. In the year 2021, to date, the County has tested exactly 12 addicts out of a total of nearly 1,200 addicts that have walked through their doors at the Emeline Clinic. 4 of those tested, ⅓, occurred in October.
In spite of the CDC guidance that “SSP’s should be considered by state, local, territorial, and tribal jurisdictions as essential public health infrastructure that should continue to operate during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the County’s SSP virtually ceased its testing practices.
Prior to the pandemic, the County was testing approximately half of the addicts that came to them for services (ref Dec ‘19 - Jan ‘20). During the pandemic’s worst days,from February ‘20 through May ‘21, a recorded 2,277 addicts visited the SSP on Emeline. 59 of them were tested for communicable disease (50 of those in February and March, 2020).
So, it appears that the County had halted its mission of preventing the spread of bloodborne disease during the pandemic (against CDC recommendations), and continue to be in conflict with their primary reason to exist: “help prevent the spread of infectious diseases associated with injection drug use.”
As far as I’m concerned, if the community is to bear the brunt of syringe litter, shouldn’t the community be entitled to a bit more effort on the part of the County in preventing the spread of communicable disease? In looking at more data produced by the County, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Syringe programs in California are required by law to produce health data every two years. Santa Cruz’s SSP presented their biennial report to the County Board of Supervisors on June 8th, 2021. In looking through this 29 page report, I noticed that there were 15 cases of HIV and 226 cases of HepC discovered in 2020. I say as: 1) the County tested less than 1% of the 1,765 addicts they saw. It should be mentioned that HepC, in its early stages (the period when recovery through medication is most successful), often causes little or no apparent illness at the time of infection and goes undetected unless the person is tested. The County admits that of the 226 cases of HepC it discovered amongst the addict population in 2020, most (if not all) were late stages of the disease that had gone previously undiagnosed.
Since assuming control over the Syringe Program in 2013, the County’s Health Officials continue to be lacking in early diagnosis of HepC. Of the hundreds of cases diagnosed every year, they are unable to determine if the cases are newly acquired or not. That I don’t get. It’s interesting to note here that the California prison system offers testing to inmates, and it has nearly a 100% rate of testing among the inmate population. They want to know.
In closing, the practice of dispensing sterile syringes and injection equipment to addicts should have checks and balances. Handing out hundreds of thousands of needles every year must have accompanying data on newly acquired communicable disease to set benchmarks, to establish goals, or be able to measure the success of the program. The County has to do better. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Big Joe 77