PHS publishes NESI report for 2008 to 2020

On 1 April 2022, Public Health Scotland (PHS) published the latest Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI) report. The aim of NESI is to measure and monitor the prevalence of blood-borne viruses, including hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV, and injecting risk behaviours among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Scotland. NESI provides information to evaluate and better target interventions aimed at reducing the spread of infection amongst PWID.

This latest report presents the results at:

• Scotland level across seven surveys, from 2008 to 2009 through to 2019 to 2020
• NHS board level for the 2019 to 2020 survey, for eight of the 11 mainland Scottish NHS boards

The initiative was initially funded by the Scottish Government as part of the Hepatitis C Action Plan, which stated that efforts to prevent HCV in Scotland must focus on preventing transmission of the virus among PWID. More recently, the initiative has been funded under the Scottish Government’s Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Framework.