In Australian prisons, there is no access to sterile injecting equipment. People who inject in prison share and re-use blunted needles, rush their injections, and inject partially dissolved substances with unsterile water. These conditions would indicate that they are at much higher risk of injecting-related bacterial infections. However, people in prison are also more likely to stop injecting during their imprisonment or do so less frequently. It is unclear how these two conditions influence the incidence of injecting-related infections. Using the Prison and Transition Health (PATH) cohort study, we examined the incidence of injecting-related infections in and out of prison among a cohort of men in Victoria.

Dr Colledge-Frisby is a Research Fellow at the National Drug Research Institute where she investigates clinical harms among people who inject drugs. Her research has broadly focused on injecting-related infections, overdose, harm reduction services, and suicide among people who inject drugs.

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