THIS SITE SAVES LIVES
ESTE SITIO SALVA VIDAS
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​By Meryl Kornfield
January 15, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. EST, Washington Post- Health

NEW YORK — In tears, Kailin See recounts a story that would not have been possible just weeks before.  A man addicted to heroin, who otherwise would have injected himself alone, visited one of the country’s first authorized locations to use drugs with supervision in early December. He had a job interview later that day, hoping to earn two paychecks by Christmas so he could afford gifts for his children, he told staffers at the Washington Heights site. But when he drew the drugs into his veins, he began to nod off and go pale, a sign of what could have been a lethal overdose. The trained workers sprang into action, giving him oxygen. He quickly came to, said See, one of the main organizers of the site.

In nondescript commercial buildings in Washington Heights and East Harlem, workers watch people use illegal drugs and step in when they overdose, a solution to the drug crisis once considered too fringe to operate in the open. Years of legal battles and debate delayed efforts by cities and states to supervised consumption sites, forcing the facilities to operate underground. These new locations, approved by the then-mayor of New York City, could spur a shift toward offering services nationwide, drug policy experts say. But these sites still present a tangled knot of concerns: The federal government has not approved overdose-prevention centers, still considered an untested concept, and neighbors worry about drawing crime to their area.

TO CONTINUE READING: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01/16/inside-first-supervised-overdose/?fbclid=IwAR2C-tDKs9OSuiB7Ef0GCZgSqolov8PYqi-zN-LFZDszDD2XST

By: Dan Grossman
Posted at 12:16 PM, Jan 04, 2022      ABC 15 Arizona

Six years ago, fentanyl was a relatively new and unheard-of drug. Developed in 1959, it was primarily used as an anesthetic and pain reliever for medical purposes without the side effect of nausea. It is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
In 2015, however, fentanyl started to make its way into the United States in noticeable doses. As a synthetic drug, it is cheaper to produce than drugs like heroin, which require cultivation. Because of its potency, people require far less fentanyl to get highSix years ago, fentanyl was a relatively new and unheard-of drug. Developed in 1959, it was primarily used as an anesthetic and pain reliever for medical purposes without the side effect of nausea. It is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.


In 2015, however, fentanyl started to make its way into the United States in noticeable doses. As a synthetic drug, it is cheaper to produce than drugs like heroin, which require cultivation. Because of its potency, people require far less fentanyl to get high.
In the years since, drug dealers started using fentanyl as a cheap substitute to cut their drugs and stretch them farther. Today, according to the CDC, fentanyl is the leading cause of death for adults ages 18-45 in the United States.
“We are in the worst overdose crisis we’ve ever been in in the United States,” said Lisa Raville, executive director of the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver. “In a magical world there would be no drugs, but we live here.”
In the year ending in April 2021, fentanyl claimed the lives of 40,010 Americans ages 18-45. That’s more than car accidents (22,442), suicide (21,678), COVID (21,335), and cancer (17,114).
“What is driving these behaviors in the illicit market is clearly just profit, it’s greediness,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

TO CONTINUE READING: https://www.abc15.com/news/national/fentanyl-is-the-leading-cause-of-death-in-americans-ages-18-45?fbclid=IwAR0O28bWzLm4oaVTNe7N-eLja_HxLsVGyK

Jon Levine and Kerry J. Byrne                     By January 1, 2022 10:49am Updated
New York Post

City health officials plan to install 10 vending machines across the Big Apple that will dispense clean needles and overdose-reversing Naloxone to drug users — an initiative it claims will help tear down barriers created by “white privilege.”
The Dec. 8 request for proposals was issued by the non-profit Fund for Public Health in New York, on behalf of city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which wants to launch a pilot program for the machines.
“Public health vending machines (PHVM) are an emerging strategy to support low-barrier access to naloxone, sterile syringes, and other harm reduction and wellness supplies,” reads the RFP for the machines, which will cost taxpayers $730,000.
The RFP also launched into a woke ideological exposition:
“The … DOHMH is committed to improving health outcomes for all New Yorkers by explicitly advancing racial equity and social justice. Racial equity does not mean simply treating everyone equally, but rather, allocating resources and services in such a way that explicitly addresses barriers imposed by structural racism (i.e. policies and institutional practices that perpetuate racial inequity) and White privilege.”

TO CONTINUE READING: https://nypost.com/2022/01/01/nyc-to-install-clean-needles-naloxone-vending-machines/

The Health Department and Hep Free NYC released the Plan to Eliminate Viral Hepatitis as a Major Public Health Threat in New York City by 2030 (Viral Hepatitis Elimination Plan), a set of strategies to reduce the number of hepatitis C infections, improve the health of people with hepatitis B and C, and reduce health inequities related to viral hepatitis infection in New York City.
Read the New York City Viral Hepatitis Elimination Plan
Viral Hepatitis Elimination Plan Goals

1. Reduce new Hep C infections among people in NYC by 90% by 2030 
2. Reduce premature deaths among people with chronic Hep B and chronic Hep C in NYC by 65% by 2030; Improve the health of people with Hep B and C in NYC 
3. Reduce health inequities related to viral hepatitis infection among people in NYC

​TO CONTINUE READING: ​https://mailchi.mp/hepfree.nyc/viralhepatitiseliminationplan?e=4319dc4b7f
​

Heavy alcohol use during the pandemic was linked to a rise in waiting list registrations and transplants due to alcohol-related hepatitis

December 13, 2021 • By Sukanya Charuchandra, Hep Magazine

Liver transplants and waiting list registrations due to alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in association with a rise in retail alcohol sales, according to study results published in JAMA Network Open.
Alcohol drinking has soared during the pandemic. Alcohol-related liver disease, driven by excessive alcohol consumption, can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure. Maia Anderson, MD, of Michigan Medicine, and colleagues looked at national changes in the number of people with ALD who were put on a waiting list or received a transplant and the potential links to alcohol sales in recent years.

TO CONTINUE: https://www.hepmag.com/article/need-liver-transplants-due-alcohol-use-spiked-covid19-pandemic

Krishen Samuel
Published:10 December 2021, INFOHEP

Access to direct-acting antivirals to cure hepatitis C has slashed incidence rates for groups most affected in Australia. Among gay and bisexual men living with HIV, incidence fell by 78% in 2019 when compared to 2015, the year before direct-acting antiviral treatment became widely available. A similar trend in hepatitis C infections was seen for HIV-negative men taking PrEP, with an 80% decline in 2019 compared to 2016.
BackgroundHepatitis C disproportionately affects gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men living with HIV. A smaller number of HIV-negative gay and bisexual men – particularly those taking HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – are also affected. Common risk factors include condomless anal sex, sexualised drug use, sharing injecting and other drug equipment, fisting and sharing sex toys.
The introduction of direct-acting antivirals has simplified and improved hepatitis C treatment significantly – over 90% of people who take them are fully cured of the infection. This contrasts with prior treatments, which lasted for a year, produced many side effects, and only resulted in a cure rate of 50% to 60%. Additionally, the efficacy of direct-acting antivirals is not affected by HIV status.
Based on the success of direct-acting antivirals to reduce rates of hepatitis C, the World Health Organization set a goal of 80% incidence reduction by 2030, relative to a 2015 baseline. With targeted resources, this can be achieved faster in highly affected subgroups, such as gay and bisexual men living with HIV.
There are studies that have looked at national-level changes in hepatitis C incidence among gay and bisexual men with HIV after introducing direct-acting antivirals. Some examples include France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and England. However, there have been no published studies looking at hepatitis C incidence among HIV-negative PrEP users.
In Australia, both medications became broadly available from 2016 after the government subsidised direct-acting antivirals, with no restrictions on treatment based on liver disease stage, substance use, or reinfection status. 
The treatment could also be prescribed by nonspecialist primary care providers, and was made available in general practices and sexual health clinics. 
PrEP, which was initially available to 7,500 people (predominantly gay and bisexual men) through implementation trials in 2016, also became widely accessible in 2018 through government subsidisation and general practitioner prescriptions among gay and bisexual men with HIVA total of 6,744 men with HIV were included in the incidence analysis, comprising 33,150 person-years of follow-up with 290 new hepatitis C infections for the period. This produced an overall incidence of 1.03 per 100 person-years, with the highest incidence in 2010 (2.12 per 100 person-years) and the lowest in 2019 (0.22 per 100 person-years).
As direct-acting antivirals only became widely available in 2016, 2015 was used as the baseline comparison year. Incidence declined in all subsequent years, falling by 60% in 2017, 45% in 2018 and 78% in 2019, relative to 2015. There was no significant change in the overall incidence trend between 2009 and 2015 and between 2016 and 2019. But a distinct difference was present between 2015 and 2016, indicating the importance of direct-acting antivirals in the incidence decline between the two periods.

TO CONTINUE READING: http://www.infohep.org/Australia-on-track-to-eliminate-hepatitis-C-among-gay-and-bisexual-men-before-2030/page/3550464/?utm_source=NAM-Email-Promotion&utm_medium=conference-bulletin&utm_campaign=English&utm_source=infohep-english&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021-12-21

We are New York district attorneys and health officials. Here’s why New York City is opening sites for people to safely use drugs.

Darcel ClarkBronx District AttorneyCy VanceManhattan District AttorneyEric GonzalezBrooklyn District AttorneyDave A. ChokshiNYC Health CommissionerMelinda KatzQueens District AttorneyPosted on December 15, 2021, at 12:04 p.m. ET

Two weeks ago, New York City became the first city in the nation to open two overdose prevention centers, located in Manhattan. Already, 25 overdoses have been averted — 25 people who are alive today thanks to these centers. Now we are calling on the Biden administration to formally authorize overdose prevention centers in the US.
Overdose prevention centers are supervised, hygienic spaces for people who use drugs to do so safely, while also providing harm reduction, physical health, and behavioral health services.

Every neighborhood in every community has experienced the tragedy of the overdose epidemic. Nationally, over 100,000 Americans died of an overdose between April 2020 to April 2021. In New York City, 2,062 people died of an overdose in 2020, the highest number of deaths since reporting began 20 years ago. The spread of fentanyl — a dangerous, synthetic opioid 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine and the primary driver of the rise in overdoses — exponentially increases the need for even more overdose prevention innovation.
Thirty years of research conducted across 100 sites on three continents has demonstrated the efficacy of overdose prevention centers. There has never been a single overdose death at any site. Participants are provided with basic human needs day after day: a smile, a sandwich, or a shower. Over time, trust is built between participants and clinical staff, which leads to participants beginning substance use disorder treatment and referrals to healthcare and other social services.
In addition, research shows overdose prevention centers reduce public drug use, syringe litter, and drug-related crime in surrounding neighborhoods. They can also function as safe havens for women who use drugs, reducing violence against women associated with street-based substance use.
We believe the overdose prevention centers in New York City will be a model for other cities to follow.
Biden recently embraced harm reduction, becoming the first president to include it in his drug policy priorities.
In another first, Congress appropriated $30 million in the American Rescue Plan to be provided to state, local, and tribal governments and organizations for overdose prevention and harm reduction services.

TO CONTINUE: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/dadarcelclark/new-york-overdose-prevention-centers?fbclid=IwAR0hZB_TZea_5_Xreys1HYn2vX2abltVm-AYdQgPPZ8iIzSIOyYC3ZquVBE

What does it mean to be ‘in community’? How do we do this in the day to day and in the contexts of multiple pandemics, settler colonialism, racism, sexism, the war on drugs, economic inequity, homophobia? What does it mean to create a collective that sustains and moves to act?

By Tamara Oyola-Santiago ' + Bronx Móvil + La Maraña collective'​


The following two essays, which reflect Bronx Móvil’s platform for action centred in radical love, were previously published in the zine Harm Reduction is Not a Metaphor.

“Harm Reduction on the streets? Love is love.” In front of a shelter in upper Manhattan as we distributed food and harm reduction supplies, a participant welcomed and thanked us with that sentiment one night in May 2020. It was a week before George Floyd’s murder, New York City was already in crisis in the middle of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fragility of the city’s social services sector was being fully revealed more and more everyday. This was not news to us, and neither were the solutions. 
As social bubbles and pods were being named as innovative in mainstream media such arrangements were already thriving in our communities pre-pandemic and grew exponentially as the months passed. Mutual aid networks exist in our communities; in fact, they are part of the fabric of BIPOC and poverty-impacted communities often marginalized and deemed hard to reach. And so we—Bronx Móvil, a collective of people impacted by the HIV crisis, who have lost loved ones to HIV and the opioid overdose crisis, who use drugs, who have experienced housing insecurity, who are Puerto Rican, Bronx residents, Queer, migrants—hit the streets with naloxone, harm reduction bags, safer smoking kits, syringes, food, water, socks, juice, PPE. The donations via churches, sewing collectives, community partners and organizers, and other harm reduction organizations flew in. The networks, la familia, grew. And we did our best to share what we were being given. 
Previously on March 20th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered residents to stay home and all non-essential businesses to close; harm reduction nonprofit organizations at the forefront of services for people who are unsheltered and unhoused were grappling with an impacted workforce and many closed as well. Limited services meant that amid a historic pandemic, there was no water for bathing or drinking or laundry, no case management, no HIV or Hep C testing, and limited ongoing medication-assisted treatment. Also, medical appointments were cancelled and some community kitchens became grab and gos with meal bags. Our participants understood that the shelter system they were being “pushed into,”  which was already experienced as a violent one, was also now a petri dish of the novel coronavirus.
Resources, funding, and production lines transitioned to personal protective equipment and vaccine development. The impact was felt deeply. We assume syringe production was also diverted, because there were simply not enough syringes available for basic harm reduction: a new syringe for each and every shot.
TO CONTINUE:https://www.artseverywhere.ca/communities-of-drug-use/


The following two essays, which reflect Bronx Móvil’s platform for action centred in radical love, were previously published in the zine Harm Reduction is Not a Metaphor.

“Harm Reduction on the streets? Love is love.” In front of a shelter in upper Manhattan as we distributed food and harm reduction supplies, a participant welcomed and thanked us with that sentiment one night in May 2020. It was a week before George Floyd’s murder, New York City was already in crisis in the middle of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fragility of the city’s social services sector was being fully revealed more and more everyday. This was not news to us, and neither were the solutions. 
As social bubbles and pods were being named as innovative in mainstream media such arrangements were already thriving in our communities pre-pandemic and grew exponentially as the months passed. Mutual aid networks exist in our communities; in fact, they are part of the fabric of BIPOC and poverty-impacted communities often marginalized and deemed hard to reach. And so we—Bronx Móvil, a collective of people impacted by the HIV crisis, who have lost loved ones to HIV and the opioid overdose crisis, who use drugs, who have experienced housing insecurity, who are Puerto Rican, Bronx residents, Queer, migrants—hit the streets with naloxone, harm reduction bags, safer smoking kits, syringes, food, water, socks, juice, PPE. The donations via churches, sewing collectives, community partners and organizers, and other harm reduction organizations flew in. The networks, la familia, grew. And we did our best to share what we were being given. 
Previously on March 20th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered residents to stay home and all non-essential businesses to close; harm reduction nonprofit organizations at the forefront of services for people who are unsheltered and unhoused were grappling with an impacted workforce and many closed as well. Limited services meant that amid a historic pandemic, there was no water for bathing or drinking or laundry, no case management, no HIV or Hep C testing, and limited ongoing medication-assisted treatment. Also, medical appointments were cancelled and some community kitchens became grab and gos with meal bags. Our participants understood that the shelter system they were being “pushed into,”  which was already experienced as a violent one, was also now a petri dish of the novel coronavirus.
Resources, funding, and production lines transitioned to personal protective equipment and vaccine development. The impact was felt deeply. We assume syringe production was also diverted, because there were simply not enough syringes available for basic harm reduction: a new syringe for each and every shot.
The following two essays, which reflect Bronx Móvil’s platform for action centred in radical love, were previously published in the zine Harm Reduction is Not a Metaphor.

“Harm Reduction on the streets? Love is love.” In front of a shelter in upper Manhattan as we distributed food and harm reduction supplies, a participant welcomed and thanked us with that sentiment one night in May 2020. It was a week before George Floyd’s murder, New York City was already in crisis in the middle of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fragility of the city’s social services sector was being fully revealed more and more everyday. This was not news to us, and neither were the solutions. 
As social bubbles and pods were being named as innovative in mainstream media such arrangements were already thriving in our communities pre-pandemic and grew exponentially as the months passed. Mutual aid networks exist in our communities; in fact, they are part of the fabric of BIPOC and poverty-impacted communities often marginalized and deemed hard to reach. And so we—Bronx Móvil, a collective of people impacted by the HIV crisis, who have lost loved ones to HIV and the opioid overdose crisis, who use drugs, who have experienced housing insecurity, who are Puerto Rican, Bronx residents, Queer, migrants—hit the streets with naloxone, harm reduction bags, safer smoking kits, syringes, food, water, socks, juice, PPE. The donations via churches, sewing collectives, community partners and organizers, and other harm reduction organizations flew in. The networks, la familia, grew. And we did our best to share what we were being given. 
Previously on March 20th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered residents to stay home and all non-essential businesses to close; harm reduction nonprofit organizations at the forefront of services for people who are unsheltered and unhoused were grappling with an impacted workforce and many closed as well. Limited services meant that amid a historic pandemic, there was no water for bathing or drinking or laundry, no case management, no HIV or Hep C testing, and limited ongoing medication-assisted treatment. Also, medical appointments were cancelled and some community kitchens became grab and gos with meal bags. Our participants understood that the shelter system they were being “pushed into,”  which was already experienced as a violent one, was also now a petri dish of the novel coronavirus.
Resources, funding, and production lines transitioned to personal protective equipment and vaccine development. The impact was felt deeply. We assume syringe production was also diverted, because there were simply not enough syringes available for basic harm reduction: a new syringe for each and every shot.

In 2019, only 32% of children and youth who had tested positive for hepatitis C in British Columbia, Canada, had initiated treatment, according to data presented at The Liver Meeting Digital Experience.

“The specific clinical and treatment experiences of young people living with HCV infection are limited in HCV research, so care cascades are a useful tool that can visualize the journey of individuals across the stages of illness, care and treatment. And these are useful for identifying gaps in progress across the stages of care and ultimately can inform public health programming to optimize care services,” Dahn Jeong, MSc, a PhD candidate at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia said during a presentation. “The aim of this study was first to construct the HCV cascade of care for persons aged younger than 30 years living in British Columbia in 2019, and we also aimed to characterize the progression of young people along the cascade.”

​Jeong and colleagues analyzed data from the British Columbia Hepatitis Testers Cohort, which includes all individuals tested for or reported as an HCV case in British Columbia since 1990, on people aged younger than 30 years in 2019 who had been diagnosed with HCV. These data were also linked with administrative data on medical visits and prescription drugs from the British Columbia Ministry of Health databases . The HCV cascade of care was defined as estimated HVC prevalence, antibody diagnosis, RNA testing, genotyping, treatment initiation and sustained virologic response (SVR). The proportion of children and youth were estimated in each stage.

​TO CONTINUE-https://www.healio.com/news/gastroenterology/20211202/many-young-people-with-hcv-remained-untreated-in-2019

Neil Osterweil
November 17, 2021  MEDSCAPE

Although the risk for liver cancer diminishes for patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections for whom virus is eliminated with direct-acting antiviral (DAA) drugs, these patients are not out of the woods, and those who do not have a sustained viral response (SVR) are at substantially higher risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), results of a large study show.
Among the patients with liver cirrhosis from HCV infections treated at 30 centers in Italy, a large percentage had an SVR after treatment with DAA drugs. Only a small percentage of this group subsequently developed HCC.
In contrast, not having an SVR was associated with a more than sevenfold higher risk for liver cancer, said Loreta A. Kondili, MD, PhD, from the Center for Global Health at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, in Rome, Italy, during a presentation of the findings at The Liver Meeting 2021: American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), held online.
"Failure to achieve SVR after DAA treatment is strongly associated with the probability of HCC development. Older age, [HCV] genotype 3, and low platelet counts and albumin levels are independent factors of HCC development despite viral eradication," she said.

TO CONTINUE: 
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/963101fbclid=IwAR2QowyYfUqAeoNpDsxVI9zPR3xgLvpbNDKcd81IngJOqP7vPLGN-xHZyh8