On Friday 5th December 2014, the NNEF held its latest ‘All Day Meeting’ – hosted by the Oasis Partnership in High Wycombe, and sponsored by Frontier Medical. More than 90 people attended this free event, coming from all over the UK. The day’s agenda was split into a series of informative sessions – including presentations from Public Health England, leading academics, needle exchange workers, drug user activists and leading experts.
After discussing a range of topics such as hepatitis C, performance and image enhancing drugs, syringe cleaning, and the revised NICE Guidance on NSPs – the day ended with the launch of the Naloxone Action Group (NAG England), of which NNEF is a proud member.
Presentations
Robert Wolstenholme gave an overview of the work undertaken by Public Health England over the last year. He didn’t use a presentation but has sent us a set of links to the resources mentioned in his talk.
Lorna Guinness from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine spoke about the cost benefit analysis of NSPs in the UK which is currently being worked on.
Lucy Platt also from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine presented on the effectiveness of NSPs and OST on Hepatitis C.
Andrew Preston from Exchange Supplies rather than giving the expected briefing on foil, spoke about the new HepC medication from Gilead and the prohibitively high price they’ve given it.
John Campbell from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde spoke about One Hit Kits (filter syringes) and a bit about the preparation of drugs from injection.
Viv Hope from Public Health England gave an update on the numbers of people who are cleaning used syringes for reuse.
Nigel Brunsdon from HIT and Injecting Advice gave a presentation called ‘Arguments against harm reduction: a collection of logical fallacies’.
Jim McVeigh from Liverpool John Moores University talked about the emerging trends in anabolic steroid use and the implications these have for drug service provision.
Chris Emmerson and Gareth Morgan from Public Health Wales gave presentations on the Welsh Harm Reduction Database and on Naloxone in Wales.
Chris Carmona spoke about the updated guidance on needle programmes from NICE.
Dr. Chris Ford gave a presentation about the development of the Naloxone Action Group (NAG) who are working to increase the provision of take home naloxone in England.
Kevin Jaffray finished up the day with a call to action for naloxone provision with a special focus on the role of user groups.
The day also included a hands on naloxone training session for NNEF members that ran parallel to some of the sessions.
