Canada's Supervised Injection Site Is Cost-effective

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Also Included In: Liver Disease / Hepatitis;  Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 18 Nov 2008 - 2:00 PST

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A cost-effectiveness analysis of Insite, Canada's only supervised safe injection site in Vancouver, concludes that it results in $14 million in savings and health gains of 920 life-years over 10 years. The study, published in CMAJ, estimated the number of HIV and Hepatitis C cases that could be prevented with decreased needle sharing, safer injection practices and more referrals to addiction services.

"Vancouver's supervised injection site is associated with improved health and cost savings, even under conservative estimates of efficacy," conclude Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi of St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto, and Gregory Zaric from The Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario.

In a related commentary, Dr. Don Des Jarlais of Beth Israel Medical Centre in New York and coauthors question some of the assumptions underlying the analysis and suggest comparisons with programs in New York City. They also point out that almost all effective interventions to reduce HIV infection in Canada will be cost-saving, given that treatment for a single case of HIV infection is estimated at $150,000 (Canadian). Thus, Insite is almost certainly cost-saving to Canadian society.

About CMAJ

CMAJ is the leading health sciences journal in Canada. CMAJ is a general medical journal publishing original research and review articles, commentaries and editorials, practice updates, an arts and ideas section and health news. Published continuously since 1911, new issues are uploaded on http://www.cmaj.ca every second Monday at 4:30 p.m. EST/EDT. http://www.cmaj.ca contains the complete editorial contents of CMAJ, supplemented by a variety of interactive features and additional content.

CMAJ is an open- and free-access journal - there are no author or page charges and access is provided free on the web (HighWire Press), http://www.cmaj.ca without registration. http://www.cmaj.ca has about 1 million requests and 250,000 page views per month. The Journal is part of the PubMed Central collection of journals http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov at the National Library of Medicine thus providing a guarantee of permanent archiving and open access. PubMed Central is now processing back issues of CMAJ to 1911.

CMAJ's impact factor - a measure of the scientific importance of articles published - has more than tripled since 1997 and is now 7.1.

The Journal receives about 2000 manuscripts a year (including letters to the editor and news articles). CMAJ's acceptance rate for unsolicited research and review articles is about 12%.

CMAJ