Service Aims and Objectives. The aims and objectives of needle exchange facilities and harm reduction services are: • To offer user-friendly, non-judgmental, client-centred and confidential services. • To assist the service users to remain healthy until they are ready and willing to cease injecting and ultimately achieve a drug-free life with appropriate support. • To reduce the rate of sharing and other high risk injecting behaviours by providing sterile injecting equipment and other support. • To reduce the rate of blood-borne infections among drug (mis)users. • To reduce drug-related deaths (immediate death through overdose and long-term such as blood-borne infections). • To promote safer injecting practices. • To provide focused harm reduction advice and initiatives, including advice on overdose prevention (e.g. risks of poly-drug use and alcohol use). • To provide and reinforce harm reduction messages. • To help service users access drug treatment to refer to other specialist drug (and alcohol) treatment services. • To help service users access other health and social care and to act as a gateway to other services (e.g. key working, prescribing, hepatitis B immunisation, hepatitis and HIV screening, primary care services etc.) • To facilitate access to primary care where relevant. • To ensure the safe disposal of used injecting equipment. • To aim to maximise the access and retention of all injectors, especially the highly socially excluded, through the low-threshold nature of service delivery and interventions provided. • To prevent initiation into injecting and to encourage alternatives to injecting. • To improve the health of local communities by preventing the spread of blood-borne viruses and by reducing the rate of discarded used injecting equipment.
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