Hepatitis C infection among injecting drug users attending the National Drug Treatment Centre.

The aim of this research was to quantify the sero-prevalence of antibody to hepatitis C among injecting drug-users and establish whether the harm minimisation programme had had an impact on infection with hepatitis C. A group (n=272) of injecting drug users attending the National Drug Treatment Centre were tested for antibody to hepatitis C virus with a second-generation EIA test. The overall sero-prevalence was found to be 84%. The results suggested that female injecting drug users were involved in greater at-risk behaviour than their male counterparts in relation to hepatitis C, since a significantly higher proportion of females tested positive than males. In relation to the duration of intravenous drug misuse, the researchers found that in patients who had been injecting for two years or more, the sero-prevalence was 95%, while in those with a duration of less than two years it was only 70%. The authors concluded that, in spite of harm reduction programmes, needle sharing continued to occur among drug users during their first two years of injecting