More than 80 used syringes found on Mount Isa university campus
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More than 80 used syringes have been found on the grounds of a Mount Isa university campus since January, raising questions about where they came from.
The adjacent hospital, 100 metres from the campus, denies they have found any during checks in April and prior to that, only "minimal numbers" were found according to a statement.
The director of James Cook University's Mt Isa campus said the while the exact number of needles varied from week to week, during a two-week period in March staff collected more than 80 used syringes.
"Recently we've noticed littering in our grounds with needles that presumably have been collected for safe needle use and this has surprised us," Mt Isa Centre for Rural and Remote Health professor Sabina Knight said.
"This is not usual behaviour for people who are injecting drug users and we're a little perplexed as to why this has occurred."
Hospital disputes needles
Dr Knight said she believes the syringes are being left by people accessing the Mt Isa Base Hospital's free needle services located at the emergency department, less than 100 metres from the university campus.
She said needles were still being found on the campus — a fact disputed by Mt Isa Base Hospital.
Chief executive of the North West Hospital and Health Service, Lisa Davies Jones, said the hospital's grounds staff had been conducting systematic checks of the grounds over the past few weeks and during that time, had found no syringes.
Prior this time, they said they had found only minimal numbers.
"We've taken it seriously," Ms Davies Jones said.
"We're checking the grounds because obviously we want to ensure that there aren't any needles around in terms of health and safety of patients and staff and the community."
Between January and March this year, 162 free needle packs were dispensed by the hospital's emergency department.
"Usually when people pick up their clean needles they are given a safe disposal box that goes with it and people use it," Dr Knight said.
"You would think if people were careless and not worried about themselves or others then maybe they wouldn't go to the effort of collecting clean needles."
Littering of needles illegal
Officer in charge of the Mt Isa police station Sergeant Renee Hanrahan said failing to safely dispose of needles was a crime.
"Under the Drugs and Misuse Act there are a number of provisions to ensure the safety around syringes," she said.
"If you fail to take all reasonable care, so that you avoid danger to other people's lives, you are committing an offence.
"Those penalties can actually carry terms of imprisonment."
Sergeant Hanrahan said while the issue on the university campus was concerning, local police were not aware of the issue occurring elsewhere within the community.
"It's not something that's been reported to us or we've discovered in any other part of the community," she said.
Free needle program
Medical director of the hospital's Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmittable Infections Unit, Dr Alun Richards, said Queensland Health's Needle and Syringe Program had been in place at hospitals and health clinics across Queensland for decades.
"The provision of sterile injecting equipment, including needles and syringes, has basically been provided in Australia since about the mid-1980s," he said.
"It was part of the initial response to the concerns about the HIV/Aids epidemic because one of the ways that people catch Aids, as well as hepatitis B and C is, or was, from sharing injecting equipment.
"It's important for people to realise that these programs have been an enormous success and Australia's actually got one of the lowest rates of HIV among injecting drug users in the world."
Dr Richards said it was unusual for people not to use the safe disposal containers provided in the needle kits.
"This isn't a problem we typically face," he said.
"The vast majority of people use the syringes appropriately and dispose of them appropriately, recognising that people also get [syringes] from other sources and it doesn't necessarily mean that [the syringes] come from [the needle program]."
Topics: drugs-and-substance-abuse, drug-use, university-and-further-education, healthcare-facilities, health-administration, health, drug-offences, mount-isa-4825
