Some careful research on Hepatitis C has yielded largely frightening results. The good news is that the virus can be killed by common disinfectants. The bad news is that infectious quantities of the virus can survive on surfaces for seven days, that the virus is commonly found not just on needles but on other injection equipment (e.g., swabs) and that drug users typically do not heat their drugs (e.g., when they melt heroin in a spoon) long enough to kill Hepatitis C.
Many efforts to make injection drug use safer have been underway for years (e.g. needle exchange), modeled on the experience of HIV prevention. I worked on lifting the federal ban on needle exchange funding, but I had no illusions that whatever good that would do for HIV would extend to Hepatitis C. The challenge is even greater than the above findings suggest: Studies of health care workers who experience accidental needle sticks show that Hepatitis C is many times more transmissible than HIV.
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