In October 2011 the HSE rolled out the national pharmacy needle exchange programme, which is a partnership initiative between the Elton John Aids Foundation, the Irish Pharmacy Union and the Health Service Executive (HSE). The programme targets counties outside of Dublin and will run to September 2014. Once pharmacies have signed a service level agreement with the HSE, their contact details are passed on to the relevant HSE services so that they can promote access to sterile injecting equipment at the participating pharmacies and accept referrals for investigation and treatment.

An average of 360 individuals attended pharmacy-based needle exchanges each month in 2012. The number of individual drug users using sterile injecting equipment increased by 188%, from 199 in January 2012 to 573 in December (Figure 1). Male attendees comprised 78% of individual attenders, and had an average age of 31 years; the average age of female attendees was 29 years.