Publications
Other Publications
Addiction and Prison settings
ECDC and EUDA report on Prevention and control of infectious diseases among people who inject drugs
Six key interventions are recommended as components of a comprehensive approach to preventing and controlling infectious diseases among people who inject drugs
1. Provision of sterile injecting equipment.
2. Provision of opioid agonist treatment in community and prison settings.
3. Offering vaccination for vaccine preventable diseases.
4. Offering routine testing for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, STIs and TB.
5. Ensuring that all people with a positive test result are linked to care.
6. Provision of supervised injecting facilities.
Irish prison service: Health needs assessment for the Irish prison service
ECDC and EUDA prison toolkit: European toolkit for the elimination of viral hepatitis in prisons
Ireland: Clinical guidelines for opioid substitution treatment
Management Advice
The Health Protection Agency in the UK has useful Advice for doctors on diagnosis, management and reporting Severe systemic sepsis related to soft tissue inflammation in injecting drug users. This document highlights the important fact that the severe and occasionally fatal syndrome of severe sepsis related to soft tissue inflammation may be difficult to distinguish from other types of injection site infection in its early stages.
Epi-Insight Articles
Anthrax identified in heroin users in Scotland - Epi-Insight, Volume 11, Issue 2, February 2010
Tetanus in injecting drug users in the UK: Update - Epi-Insight, Volume 5, Issue 3, March 2004
Tetanus in injecting drug users in England - Epi-Insight, Volume 4, Issue 9, December 2003
Botulism in injecting drug users - Epi-Insight, Volume 3, Issue 6, June 2002
Journal Articles
Epidemiological findings and medical, legal, and public health challenges of an investigation of severe soft tissue infections and deaths among injecting drug users -- Ireland, 2000 - Epidemiol Infect. 2006 Aug;134(4):894-901.
Unexplained illness among injecting drug users in Dublin: a case-control study - J Epidemiol Community Health. 2002 Aug;56(8):575-6
Last updated: 12 September 2025