Sustained increase in the sharing of needles and syringes among drug users in England and Wales.

Monitoring injecting drug users risk behaviours is important because changes in these can rapidly increase blood-borne virus transmission rates. In England and Wales needle and syringe sharing in the previous month has been monitored through annual cross-sectional surveys since 1991. After declining in the early 1990s, the proportion sharing increased significantly between 1997 and 2000. This, and an apparent increase in hepatitis B transmission, indicates that injectors are at an increasing risk of infection with blood-borne viruses.

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