Key findings
- Australia's network of 4,442 NSP services was comprised of 109 primary, 833 secondary and 3,067 pharmacy NSPs in 2022/23. These face-to-face services were supplemented by 433 syringe dispensing machines.
- Based on ~1,800 NSP occasions of service (OOS) recorded at primary and secondary NSPs that participated on the snapshot day in 2023, one third (32%) of NSP OOS involved provision of health education/interventions and one in ten (10%) involved a referral.
- Three in four (71%) NSP attendees were male, three fifths (62%) were aged between 30 and 49 years, young people (aged <25 years) comprised 4% of OOS in 2023 and excluding occasions of service where Indigenous status was not reported, 22% of NSP attendees identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
- Stimulants and hallucinogens (predominantly methamphetamine) were the most commonly reported drugs injected on the snapshot day in 2023 (47%), followed by analgesics (heroin, other opioids and opioid substitution therapies, 32%) and anabolic agents and selected hormones (predominantly anabolic steroids, 14%).
- Australian NSPs distributed 50.8 million needles and syringes in 2022/23. These were distributed to an estimated population of 72,886 people who inject drugs (excluding people who inject occasionally). This equates to 698 needles/syringes each per annum, exceeding the UNAIDS definition of high syringe coverage by more than three-fold. Syringe coverage (syringes per injection) remained high at 114% in 2022/23.
