She denounced an open-air consumption room. The Regional Health Agency (ARS) finally decided on Tuesday to put the two sterile syringe dispensers back into service for drug addicts in Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis). She had withdrawn them on August 31, arousing the anger of associations such as Doctors of the world, Act Up-Paris or AIDES.
The establishment declares in a press release ‘(not yet available online): “The observations made in the field show that the increase in load of the substitute measures tested is both incomplete and late, and therefore insufficiently effective. […] consequently, the ARS decides to reinstall the vending machines without delay to respond to the immediate public health issues..
The distributors had been installed for about ten years next to the Robert Ballanger hospital. But the massive presence of used syringes in the neighboring town of Sevran, exposing the population to the transmission of infectious diseases, had prompted the prefecture to request this closure. For associations, quoted by BFM TVthis judgment exposed “people who use drugs are at greater risk of infectious contamination, particularly by HIV and hepatitis C”.
Reopening of the debate around DCRs
This event around sterile syringe distributors is, for the City of Paris and the departmental council, an opportunity to recall their desire to open a lower-risk consumption room (SCMR) in Seine-Saint-Denis. A first “shoot room” has already been open since October 2016 in Paris. Over the first eleven months, 24,200 passages were recorded, i.e. 180 per day on average according to the report published by the capital. Consumption which therefore did not take place in the public space: 60% fewer syringes would be recorded there.
However, for the neighboring department, time is running out. The experimentation of these rooms, permitted by a law of 2015, is possible for six years from the date of opening of the first. The term of operation should also not be less than three years. Future rooms must therefore be open before October 2019 at the latest.
According to the associations, Seine-Saint-Denis is also the department where prevention equipment remains the least accessible. And according to a report published in 2017 by the Departmental Council, it is the second French department most affected by the HIV epidemic after Paris. Each year, 2.5 to 3 times more new cases are recorded compared to the rest of France.
Read also :
- The WHO call for the use of single-use syringes
- Soon syringes for drug addict prisoners?
