Key findings
- Australia's network of 4,159 NSP services was comprised of 104 primary, 811 secondary and 2,867 pharmacy NSPs in 2019/20. These face to face services were supplemented by 377 syringe dispensing machines. In 2020, n=169 NSPs in seven jurisdictions provided programs to facilitate access to take-home naloxone.
- Based on 2,500 NSP occasions of service (OOS) recorded at primary and secondary NSPs that participated on the snapshot day in 2020, almost half (45%) of NSP OOS involved provision of Health Education/Interventions and one in ten involved a referral.
- Three in four (73%) NSP attendees were male, two thirds (67%) were aged between 30 and 49 years, young people (aged <25 years) comprised 4% of OOS in 2019 and excluding occasions of service where Indigenous status was not reported, 21% 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 2020 (46%), followed by analgesics (heroin, other opioids and opioid substitution therapies, 36%) and anabolic agents and selected hormones (predominantly anabolic steroids, 9%).
- Australian NSPs distributed 57.8 million needles and syringes in 2019/20. These were distributed to an estimated population of 75,756 people who inject drugs (excluding people who inject occasionally). This equates to 762 needles/syringes each per annum, exceeding the UNAIDS definition of high syringe coverage by more than three-fold. Syringe coverage (syringes per injection) remained at >100% in 2020.
