This Saturday is World Hepatitis Day, so throughout this week we’ve been doing our part to raise awareness of hepatitis testing and treatment.
Out of the 325 million people living with viral hepatitis globally, 9 in 10 are living with hepatitis B or hepatitis C without knowing.
– World Hepatitis Alliance
Led by World Hepatitis Alliance, the day promotes the need for a massive scale-up in screening, diagnosis and healthcare in order to reach goals by NHS England to eliminate hepatitis C nationally by 2025 and by the World Health Organisation to eliminate hepatitis C and b globally by 2030.
This week our staff will be sharing the #FindTheMissingMillions campaign to encourage as many service users to receive free and confidential tests and vaccinations.
World Hepatitis Day is great chance for us to spread the word about how effective and easy the new treatment for hepatitis C is, test as many people as we can and offer hepatitis B vaccines to our service users. We are aiming to get as many people into treatment as we can to help improve their lives.
– Jess, BDP’s Blood-Borne Virus Nurse
At our central Health & Harm Reduction Centre, we offer hepatitis C testing through a simple finger-prick test for minimal discomfort. We also offer quick fibroscans to check your liver’s health and free hepatitis B vaccinations (Monday – Friday). Please call ahead to check availability.
We are also pleased to be running a Community Treatment Clinic pilot on Mondays 1.30 – 4.30pm, where staff from University Hospital Bristol are able to offer a range of testing, vaccinations and a new treatment programme – from just 1 tablet daily, from just 8 weeks.
On Tuesday 14th August, SARI (Stand Against Racism and Inequality) will be hosting an alcohol awareness workshop, inviting members of the public and those working in support services to join in the discussion around alcohol in our communities and how we can all help make a difference.
The awareness if for… communities, friends and families – alcohol can affect anyone but they may not want to talk about it.
– Alex Raikes, SARI Director
The event will be kick-started by SARI’s Director, Alex Raikes, and BDP’s CEO, Maggie Telfer, who will explore problematic use of alcohol in communities across Bristol. Staff from BDP will then explore how we are supporting people to detox from alcohol in their local GP Practices. Dr Ben Watson, from the University of Bristol will also be presenting and answering your questions on everything you want to know about alcohol and its effects.
After the presentations, there will be a short series of workshops and discussions inviting you to collaborate on how alcohol is affecting different communities in Bristol and how to overcome barriers to allow people to access support.
BDP have been praised in Addiction Journal’s August 2018 edition for our work supporting a research project exploring the impact of buprenorphine and methadone on the reduction of mortality rates.
People with opioid dependence have more than 10 times the risk of premature mortality than the general population.
Focused on primacy care settings across the UK, the project aimed to estimate whether opioid substitution treatment (OST) with buprenorphine or methadone is associated with a greater reduction in the risk of mortality.
We are grateful for comments and contributions from patients and drug workers at Bristol Drugs Project (BDP)… in particular Rachel Ayres and Louisa Chowen at BDP for organizing patient and public involvement.
BDP contributed to the research project by providing access to our experienced staff and service users as part of our work delivering OST alongside GP’s in 42 surgeries across Bristol.
We began the day meeting partner organisation Terrence Higgins Trust who kindly laid out a breakfast buffet of pastries and coffee, giving our team the boost they needed to join the parade. Marching alongside THT, our Prism team were joined by staff, volunteers and service users from across BDP services. With our Prism banner held aloft, proudly leading our team, we joined the Pride Parade from Castle Park marching to the Pride Festival site at Bristol Harbourside.
What a load of love there was on the march!
– Jane, Engagement Team Leader
As welfare partners of Pride Day, our fantastic team were on site providing festival-goers with harm reduction advice and resources. Our team put in a lot of effort to stand-out from crowd and get in the festival spirit with a range of activities and give-aways to attract people to find out more about the work we do.
It was great to be at pride festival again this year. Our stand looked very colourful and stood out, so people flocked to our stall to engage in harm reduction advice and get lots of freebies that we provided on the day.
– Darlene, Engagement Worker
Located beside the Mersey Medical first aid team, we worked in collaboration to support lots of people who were affected by too much sun, alcohol or other drugs, and needed a quiet place away from the crowds where they could get a medical check-up and come sit and relax in our chill-out zone.
Pride was a great opportunity to connect with members of the public and local community, including the Brigstowe Project and Avon and Somerset Police. It gave us the chance to introduce our Prism drop-in to people interested in reducing the harm substances cause, and family and friends who want to support their loved ones.
Wonderful atmosphere with lots of engagement and people telling us how great it was to have us there. Spoke to lots of people about what Prism does and several people said they would be dropping in to speak to us at Midland road.
– Deb, Engagement Worker
We would like to say a big thanks to staff, volunteers and service users who helped make the day possible and represent Prism proudly, be it marching in the midday heat, or engaging with festival-goers at our harm-reduction and chill-out zone.
Thank you to everyone who made BDP’s contribution at Pride such a fabulous one. It takes a huge amount of planning and bodies on the day and feedback is of really good visibility of Prism, excellent harm reduction conversations and great joint working with First Aid services.
– Maggie Telfer, CEO
Prism: LGBT+ Alcohol & Drug Support. Drop-In Mondays 5pm – 8pm at 23-25 Midland Road, Old Market Quarter, Bristol, BS2 0JT.
At Prism, we believe that the better understanding you have of the pleasures and risks associated with alcohol and other drugs, the more you are able to make informed decisions. To help you enjoy Pride, we’re going to be be providing you with harm reduction advice and resources, as well as a quiet place away from the crowds where you can come sit and relax.
If you see us at Pride, please come and say hello. We’ve got plenty of goodies we’ll be giving out and we’ve launched a new survey which will continue to help us find out about the shape of drug use in Bristol.
Prism hold a weekly free and confidential drop-in, just off Old Market Street every Monday evening, where anyone can access advice, information and a range of support services, or to refer themselves into Bristol’s treatment service.
We had a great time at the 50th Anniversary of St Paul’s Carnival. Our fantastic Engagement Team spent the day providing essential harm reduction advice and a safe place for those wanting to relax in our chill-out zone.
The carnival was a huge success for us with lots of good engagement and a lot of people telling us how great it was for us to be there. We gave out lots of good harm reduction advice and looked after a good few people at our chill out area.
– Marcus, BDP Engagement Worker
It was great to be a visible part of the local community we support, and engage with carnival-goers by giving out plenty of goody-bags and refreshments. Our photo booth with dressing up box and props provided quite the hit – even with the local Police force!
We were blown away by your team’s involvement, (we) had loads of great feedback from the public and also our own teams… We loved how cool, in both senses of the word, your chill out truck was!
The service BDP provide is fantastic and you should all be very proud!
– St Pauls Carnival
We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone at BDP who took part in the day’s events and provided carnival-goers with dedicated and expert support and information.
