HIV and hepatitis are endemic in British prisons, and inmates who inject
drugs are at a high risk of infection, according to a study of nearly 4000
prisoners by Andrew Weild and his colleagues in the Public Health Laboratory
Service (Communicable Disease and Public Health, vol 3, p 121). More
than 30 per cent of inmates who had injected drugs were infected with hepatitis
C, and most of those who had injected while in prison shared needles. “The main
message to prisons is `get your methadone act together’,” says David Goldberg of
the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental…
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