swap

By: ALISHA MORRISSEY, The Telegram

 

The Safe Works Access Program (SWAP), which provides clean needles to injection drug users in exchange for used ones, is expanding into the Corner Brook area.

The SWAP program offered through the AIDS Committee of Newfoundland and Labrador handed out nearly 43,000 clean needles in 2009 in exchange for 24,000 dirty ones.

"It's busy. It's busier and busier all the time," says Tree Walsh, who helped build the St. John's needle exchange program, now running out of the Tommy Sexton Centre.

The first year it had funding, Walsh says she gave out 5,000 needles and took in nearly 36,000 dirty ones.

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