Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association (1996)
Encouraging Pharmacy Sale and Safe Disposal of Syringes in Seattle, Washington
Section snippets
Public Health and Pharmacy Collaboration
In March 2001, Public Health-Seattle & King County (Public Health) began collaborating with community pharmacists to increase voluntary syringe sales to help prevent blood-borne infections. For each pharmacy, a pharmacy representative and the public health director sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU). The MOU recognizes the pharmacy as Public Health's “community partner” providing access to sterile syringes for disease prevention Public Health agrees to provide (1) written materials for
Syringe Disposal
Public Health also established a program to help reduce the number of used syringes in the trash and solid waste. Individuals may give any quantity of used syringes to staff at 10 Public Health clinics and 7 SEPs for safe disposal as medical waste. Secure, steel syringe drop boxes have been installed outside 3 Public Health clinics and, through collaborative initiatives, outside 1 private Community Health Center. These enable individuals to discretely and safely dispose of syringes 24 hours a
Conclusion
Seattle and King County are served by active SEPs that exchange more than 2 million syringes a year. However, because some IDUs continued to share syringes, and because of the millions of additional syringes needed for IDUs to have a new, sterile syringe for each injection, Public Health wanted to expand pharmacy syringe sales to IDUs. The new policy of the Washington Board of Pharmacy and new state laws allowed pharmacists to expand syringe sales to IDUs. Public Health staff established
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The authors declare no conflicts of interest or financial interests in any product or service mentioned in this article.