] Date:   Mon, Jun 23, 1997
CANBERRA TIMES June 23 1997 p5
DAILY TELEGRAPH June 23 1997 p17

Buried in the plethora of articles on the tobacco industry settlement in 
the USA, is the claim from Australian researchers that international 
evidence clearly shows that needleexchange programs slow the spread of 
AIDS. A review of 214 studies on HIV prevalence in the United States, 
Europe, Asia and the South Pacific found that the infection increased more 
in cities which did not have needleexchange programs compared with those 
that did. The average annual change in numbers of people with HIV was 11 
per cent lower in cities with programs allowing addicts to exchange used 
needles for clean ones. Deputy director of the National Centre in HIV 
Epidemiology and Clinical Research at the University of NSW, John Kaldor, 
and Susan Hurley, of the University of Melbourne's department of public 
health, said the difference was highly statistically significant. The view 
that these programs were not effective no longer seemed tenable, the 
researchers said in their report published in The Lancet.