A core component of drug treatment is the aim to reduce the immediate and long term harms caused to the health of drug users.

Drug use and in particular injecting drug use can cause or contribute to a range of health risks including:

• Overdose and other drug related death
• Blood borne virus infection
• Bacterial infections
• Injecting related wounds
• Mental health problems

By empowering and supporting all those in contact with services to make changes to their drug use and risk taking behaviour, the drug treatment system can reduce these harms.

Nottingham Crime & Drugs Partnership has placed high priority on developing the harm reduction agenda during 2007/8. A partnership harm reduction strategy group will be put in place during quarter 2 that will have overall responsibility for the development and implementation of a local harm reduction strategy.

Key developments already underway for 2007/8 include:

• A system for confidential inquiries into drug related deaths,
• A system for cascading drug alerts,
• Sign off of a drug related death strategy,
• A blood borne virus commissioning strategy,
• And an integrated care pathway for blood borne virus interventions and injecting related health problems.

These documents will be available from this page once they are published.