The number of HIV infections in low- and middle-income acquired due to unsafe medical injections by 87% between 2000 and 2010, investigators report in PLOS One. The authors describe this as “a remarkable public health achievement.” The number of new hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections attributable to unsafe medical injections also fell by 83% and 91%, respectively.

Injects made using a syringe and/or a needle previously used on another patient involves a risk of transmission of blood-borne infections when the equipment is re-used without adequate sterilisation. In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in low- and middle-income countries, unsafe injections were the source of 5% of new HIV infections, a third of new cases of HBV and 40% of new HCV transmissions. The Safe Infection Global Network was set up in response to reduce the number of infections due to injections. Canadian investigators repeated the 2000 analysis and used prevalence and incidence data collected from a variety of sources to estimate the number and proportion of new HIV, HBV and HCV infections acquired via unsafe medical injecting practices through to 2010. Their findings were highly encouraging. The estimate for the number of HIV infections acquired due to unsafe medical infections in 2000 remained unchanged at between 133,000-266,000 cases. Therefore, between 4.6%-9.1% of all new HIV infections in 2000 were caused by unsafe injections.

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