Trends in intravenous drug abuse as reflected in national hepatitis reporting

L. Minichiello and R. Retka

American Journal of Public Health, 1976, vol. 66, issue 9, 872-877

Abstract: A procedure for obtaining an indicator of trends in illicit intravenous (I.V.) drug use, a form of drug use which is very harmful and difficult to measure, has been developed using national hepatitis surveillance data. Hepatitis reports are separated into two groups: one containing mostly cases related to transmission via I.V. drug use and the other containing cases related to transmission via personal contact and blood transfusion. The analysis of ten years of national hepatitis reporting (1966 to 1975) shows an almost tenfold rise in drug related hepatitis cases from 1966 to 1972. In the last three years the number of cases has declined but remains substantially greater than the pre epidemic levels. The rise in I.V drug related cases began in the 1960's among minority groups living in the center cities of the East and West Coasts and spread during the 1970's into the suburbs of these cities and into metropolitan areas throughout the United States. Limitations of this indicator of I.V drug use relate to the characteristics of the surveillance system and to the underlying relationship of hepatitis to I.V. drug use.

Date: 1976
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1976:66:9:872-877_7

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Alfredo Morabia

More articles in American Journal of Public Health from American Public Health Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().