Syringe Services

Syringe Pick-up Safety

If you come across a used syringe in our community or any other public place, do not touch it!

The syringe may be used and could be carrying viruses that can cause hepatitis C, HIV, or other blood borne diseases. If you are in Eugene or Roseburg, email HIV Alliance and we will send staff who are trained in syringe pick-up and the necessary precautions.

If possible, stay around the site until staff can arrive and encourage others to avoid touching the syringe as well.

Need someone to come pick up a used syringe? Email prevention@allianceor.org.

While we do our best to reduce and eliminate used syringes in our community, it’s impossible to be 100% successful. If there are no syringe pick-up services near you, you can follow the steps below. Keep in mind, these are safe strategies for adults only. If you are underage, find an adult and let them know of the hazard.

To pick up syringes safely, remember:

• wear needle-stick safe gloves
• use a tool to pick up the syringe(s)
• place the syringe in a sharps container (make sure sharp container is resting on level surface, not in your hand!)
• Secure lid to sharps container
• Contact HIV Alliance or take it to a dump

Naloxone

HIV Alliance provides certified training and naloxone to syringe exchange clients, first responders, and the general public. Naloxone, also known as Narcan, is a life-saving drug that can prevent or reverse an opioid overdose.

The drug has to be administered as soon as overdose symptoms begin and its effects are almost immediate, restoring respiration to a person whose breathing has either slowed or stopped due to heroin or prescription opioid pain medications, by blocking and reversing the brain’s opioid receptor.

The drug comes in several forms. Click here for an online training on injectable naloxone and nasal spray.

For information on and to schedule a community overdose prevention (naloxone) training, contact HIV Alliance Prevention Manager Dane Zahner at prevention@allianceor.org.

Harm Reduction Philosophy

Harm Reduction is a public health philosophy that seeks to empower individuals, remove barriers to accessing the support that they need, and supply pragmatic approaches to risk reduction in a non-judgmental/non-coercive way that is compassionate and accepting of any positive change. Harm Reduction supports a wide spectrum of strategies from doing the behavior more safely, to limiting certain behaviors, to abstinence. HIV Alliance is a member of harm reduction focused groups across our service region, including the Harm Reduction Coalition of Lane County.

Principles of Harm Reduction include:

• Meeting the client where they are, using programs designed for the community being served.
• Non-judgmental and non-coercive services are provided to clients in the communities and places where they are comfortable and safe in order to empower them to reduce the attendant harm.
• Accepts that drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects on the people using drugs, rather than ignore or condemn those individuals.
• Understands that drug use and behavior change are complex and multifaceted. They include a continuum of behaviors from severe abuse to total abstinence.
• It acknowledges that some drug use methods are safer than others, and respects each individual’s drug use choices.
• Ensures that people who inject drugs and those with a history of drug use routinely have a real voice in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them.
• Affirms that people who inject drugs are the primary agents responsible for reducing the harm from their drug use, and seeks to empower them to support each other and share information.
• Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination and other social inequities affect both people’s vulnerability to and capacity for dealing with drug-related harm.
• Does not attempt to minimize or ignore the real or tragic harm and dangers associated with licit and illicit drug use.

Despite evidence from many studies that syringe exchange programs are highly cost-effective ways to prevent HIV and have not been found to increase drug use, harm reduction programs continue to be heavily contested here in the US and around the world. On a global basis, about $100 billion is spent annually on the war on drugs.

Research by Harm Reduction International indicates that if even as little as 7.5% of this $100 billion is redirected to harm reduction programs, by 2030 there would be 94% fewer new HIV infections among people who inject drugs.

HIV Alliance is the only agency providing comprehensive syringe exchange programs in Lane, Douglas, and Josephine Counties, but we need your help to continue doing so. Please consider making a small donation today.

With each dollar, we are able to purchase 10 new syringes. It truly makes a difference. Click here and be the difference!