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THOMPSON-OKANAGAN – Nearly 400 new Hepatitis C cases and as many as 15 HIV cases were recorded by Interior Health last year, and most were caused by injection drug use.
The numbers may seem surprisingly high, but are average compared to recent years, according to senior medical health officer Dr. Trevor Corneil, who says they’ve actually been on an overall downward trend over the past 15 years with the advent of harm reduction strategies.
With the number of discarded needles skyrocketing across the Thompson-Okanagan, you might have expected that HIV and Hepatitis C rates would be on the rise, given most cases are caused by dirty needles. In Vernon, roughly 700 needles were picked up by social agencies in the first six months of 2016. In Kamloops, the average collection has spiked to an unprecedented 500 needles a month and the issue has been on Kelowna council’s radar as well.
But, all those needles showing up in parks and public spaces are actually keeping rates stagnant, probably even lowering them, and according to medical experts pose little to no health risk to the general public.
“What has worked is flooding the market with clean needles,” Corneil says. “So whenever (a user) goes to inject, they actually have a clean needle to use and are not looking around to share a needle.”
And with a significant number of people infected with Hepatitis C and HIV in Okanagan communities — many of them unaware of it — it’s important that drug users continue to have access to clean needles, Corneil says.