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‘We’ve created
consumerism and
more people feel
stressed, overwhelmed
and unhappy.’
Professor Phil Hanlon
‘You have to fight
people and know
that you’re in it to
save lives.’
Senator Larry Campbell
‘We need to let the
public know about the
real dangers, rather
than just saying
“drink responsibly”.’
Professor Mark Bellis
‘The situation with
hepatitis C is going
to get grimmer’.
Professor GrahamFoster
lth challenge
alth challenge
ealth c llenge
November 2012 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 13
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Public health |
Cities
know that you’re in it to save lives.’
Professor Mark Bellis brought the focus back to the UK with a sobering look
at drinking habits, likening the picture to Hogarth’s Gin Lane.
‘Around 50 per cent of all violence in England and Wales is alcohol related
and around 50 per cent of adults avoid city centres at night because of alcohol,’
he said. Cheap alcohol and longer opening hours shaped the way we drink, with
people drinking more in a single night out than government recommendations
for a whole week.
‘It’s illegal to sell alcohol to a drunk person but just three people were
prosecuted in 2010,’ he said. Furthermore, city centre statistics did not reflect
the wider damage to families and from incidents and regular drinking habits in
private environments: ‘People are dying in part due to a toxigenic approach.’
The range of options for tackling this included environmental management,
earlier support, limiting alcohol sale times and increasing prices.
‘We need to let the public know about the real dangers, rather than just
saying “drink responsibly”,’ he added.
*****
Speakers considered the ‘traditional’ public health challenges, such as infectious
diseases, alongside emerging issues, such as new drugs and evolving social
behaviours.
A very modern public health problem was presented by Dr Owen Bowden-
Jones of Central North West London NHS Trust, who looked at the continuing
rise of club drugs. At this year’s Glastonbury Festival, benzylpiperazine (BZP)
overtook cannabis as the drug most confiscated by police. In an anonymised
survey in Soho by drug intervention database Tictac, urine samples showed a
high concentration of new psychoactives – so-called ‘legal highs’. A further sign
of their popularity was in the growth of online sales outlets, from 314 sites in
2010 to 690 a year later.
Given evidence of usage, the small numbers of people presenting for drug
treatment indicated that users of new psychoactives either did not encounter
problems, or if they did, they did not want to be associated with traditional
drug services or consider them appropriate for their needs, said Bowden-
Jones. Through setting up the Club Drug Clinic in Chelsea and Westminster
Hospital, it was established that there was a definite need for the service. By
making self-referral easy, by email and by mobile phones via QR codes, they
had attracted clients with an average age of early 30s from across London and
beyond.
*****
Reminding delegates of some of public health’s toughest challenges, professor of
hepatology, Graham Foster, warned that the situation with hepatitis C was ‘going to
get grimmer’, with many older patients now needing palliative care.
‘The virus is spreading and the epidemic is getting bigger,’ he said, adding that
the Health Protection Agency’s figure of 6,000 infections a year was a ‘gross
underestimate’ and that the problemwould get much bigger in the next ten years.
‘We need a new treatment model that deals with patients where they want
to be treated,’ he said. The population of active drug users had shown a good
success rate for cure and for disease-free survival – ‘therapy can be given, people
can be treated, they can be cured’. A study in Bristol had shown that by treating
just a small proportion of injectors, the spread of hep C could be halted and the
disease eliminated.
To eradicate hep C would need political support, funding – which wouldn’t be
cheap, but a viable alternative to expensive deaths or homeless people dying on
the streets – and staying power for a concerted effort over the next ten years.
‘If we do nothing it’s going to get worse on our watch – it’s going to be us
stepping over bodies on our way to work,’ he said. ‘We can eliminate this and
we should.’
DDN