Top service for addicts

http://www.news.com.au/sundayheraldsun/story/0,,21678045-2862,00.html

DRUG addicts are receiving a “gold-class” syringe service, while the health system fails pensioners and those needing surgery and emergency care.
Home delivery of syringes is easier and quicker than for a pizza.

Needles and users’ kits are sped anywhere in Melbourne — as late as 11pm — within minutes.

State Budget figures show 6.9 million needles and syringes are on course to be handed out in the year to June — almost 20,000 a day.

But they show health services falling below targets in such areas as emergency treatment, cancer screening and semi-urgent surgery.

The latest hospitals performance report also shows the health system failing to meet targets in several critical areas.

Needles were delivered within 22 minutes from Box Hill to Upper Ferntree Gully, 15km away, late one evening this week.

A pizza restaurant in Box Hill refused to deliver to Upper Ferntree Gully because it was too far away. A nearby outlet took 35 minutes to deliver.

Syringes were available in the CBD within two minutes of a call to the AIDS Prevention Health Awareness Program’s foot patrol, which operates until 11.30pm.

Couriers from Box Hill’s Community Health Outreach Program Eastern Region delivered 10 syringes, cotton wool and skin cleansing solution to Upper Ferntree Gully. Advice was offered on how to inject illegal drugs.

In the CBD, syringes were dispensed in packs of five. Social workers offered $10 to addicts completing a short questionnaire.

Handouts under the syringe delivery program are up more than 600,000 on 1999-2000, when the heroin epidemic was at its height.

But health service performance figures for the current financial year released in the Budget show:

ONLY 70 per cent of emergency patients are transferred to a ward within eight hours.

THE number of women being screened for breast and cervical cancer is significantly below target.

SOARING numbers of emergency patients not treated within 30 minutes.

THE number of bed days in high-care homes for the aged has dropped by more than 4000.

Tuesday’s Budget also revealed funding shortfalls against poll promises to slash waiting lists, improve emergency treatment and boost ambulance response times.

Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said Health Minister Bronwyn Pike had failed to protect the public during the recent HIV and nursing home deaths scandals, failed to deliver on election promises and was failing to meet her targets.”Bronwyn Pike’s list of failures is becoming as long as her surgery waiting list,” Ms Shardey said.

A spokesman for Ms Pike said on any benchmark, Victoria’s health system was one of Australia’s best.

“Victoria’s hospitals are admitting 300,000 more people a year than they did in 1999,” he said.