Key findings
- Australia's network of 4,708 NSP services was comprised of 112 primary, 918 secondary and 3,220 pharmacy NSPs in 2023/24. These face-to-face services were supplemented by 458 syringe dispensing machines.
- Based on ~2,000 NSP occasions of service (OOS) recorded at primary and secondary NSPs that participated on the snapshot day in 2024, one third (34%) of NSP OOS involved provision of health education/interventions and one in ten (10%) involved a referral.
- Three in four (72%) NSP attendees were male, three fifths (60%) were aged between 30 and 49 years, young people (aged <25 years) comprised 5% of OOS in 2024 and excluding occasions of service where Indigenous status was not reported, 23% 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 2024 (48%), followed by analgesics (heroin, other opioids and opioid substitution therapies, 29%) and anabolic agents and selected hormones (predominantly anabolic steroids, 12%).
- Australian NSPs distributed 54.6 million needles and syringes in 2023/24. These were distributed to an estimated population of 72,984 people who inject drugs (excluding people who inject occasionally). This equates to 749 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 121% in 2023/24.
