A report from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has found that half of people who inject drugs are infected with hepatitis C, one in 100 have HIV and a third have a bacterial infection as a result of their injecting.
Almost a quarter of injectors aged under 25 continue to share needles and syringes. In 2011, one-in-six people who inject drugs were found to have been infected with the hepatitis B virus at some point in their lives. This is a fall from 2001, when over a quarter had been infected. This fall is due to a programme of hepatitis B vaccination which has specifically targeted this group and in 2011, 76% of injectors accepted the vaccination, up from 37% in 2001.
