Safe Injecting Practices are vital to anyone who chooses to use injecting as their preferred method of ingesting their drugs. Here are a few tips on how to minimize your chances of contracting an infection or a blood borne virus....
1. ALWAYS use a new fit. For most Australians, there is no excuse now days for not having a new fit. There are needle exchanges in every regional centre of Australia. If you cannot use a new fit, see section (*) below.
2. Try and get yourself an area that you can keep as clean and sterile as possible. This may include putting down a sheet of plastic or a garbage bag. Put all your injecting equipment on top of this plastic.
3. Get together your drugs, your spoon or other container to mix the drugs in, swabs impregnated with alcohol, a filter (cotton wool balls are best), your new fit and of course - the drugs!
4. Swab the spoon or other mixing container out so that it is sterile. Put the powdered drug into the spoon and use the new syringe to draw up some water. Water should be sterile (available from most needle exchanges) or boiled and cooled. Do not use hot water. Add the right amount of water and mix the drugs and water. Swab your fingers before you break off a piece of filter, and then add that to the mix. Draw up the liquid drug by placing the needle against the filter and jacking back the syringe..
5. If you need to, now is the time to place a torniquet above the injection site. The torniquet should NOT be used by anyone else. It only takes an invisible drop of someone else's infected blood to expose you to viruses such as HIV or Hepatitis.
6. Swab the injection site and insert the needle into the chosen vein at an angle. You will know when you are in a vein, when you jack back the plunger and a small amount of blood enters into the barrell of the syringe. Depress the plunger, withdraw the needle and place a clean cotton ball against the injection site and hold it there to prevent bruising.
7. Place ALL your used injecting equipment into a special sharps disposal unit and return it to your needle exchange. If you do not have a sharps disposal unit, a hard plastic or glass bottle will suffice. It is always best to return all injecting equipment to your local needle exchange. It helps with our statistics and allows us to lobby to keep the exchange open. It also means that we can dispose of the syringes properly and that accidental needle stick injury risk can be greatly minimized.
8. Dispose of your plastic surface by sealing it in two plastic bags and placing it in the rubbish bin. Any blood spills should be immediately wiped up with hospital grade bleach.
* If you are unable to access new syringes, then you should follow these steps below; however, nobody really knows whether these steps will prevent the spread of diseases such as Hepatitis C - all we can do is hope to minimize the risk of transmission. REUSING FITS SHOULD ONLY EVER BE A LAST OPTION.
1. Immediately after use, rinse the fit in cold water until all signs of blood are gone. Squirt the water down the sink or into an old drink bottle. Do this as soon as you've used the fit since dried or clotted blood is hard to wash out and can block the fit. Always use cold water, as hot water will clot blood in the fit and block it.
2. Fill the fit with fresh, high-strength bleach. Use the strongest bleach available (usually the most expensive!). With the fit full of bleach, replace the cap over the needle and shake it for 30 seconds or more. Time this on a watch or count it out slowly. Then squirt the bleach down the sink or into an old drink bottle. Now repeat the bleach process, again shaking for 30 seconds.
3. With another container of fresh, clean water, rinse the fit out at least two times. Again, squirt the water down the sink or into an old drink bottle, not into your containers of bleach or clean water. Empty all your containers down the sink when you are finished.
Remember that this way of cleaning fits cannot be guaranteed to kill the Hepatitis Virus. Taking time with the above steps improve your changes of avoiding transmission of Hepatitis, but ideally you should
