Dumped needles prick kids

By SCOTT INGLIS and CATHERINE MASTERS

Four children have been tested for HIV and hepatitis after hundreds of dirty hypodermic needles were dumped in an Auckland playground.

The children - aged 3 to 7 - now face an agonising wait of weeks to see if they test positive after playing with the bloody syringes.

Other children may also have come into contact with the needles, and health officials say any worried parents should seek urgent medical advice.

The Herald has been told that the children found a Pak 'N Save shopping bag filled with up to 300 syringes in a rubbish bin at Miranda Reserve, Avondale, on Sunday morning.

Other syringes had been scattered around the bark-strewn play area of the reserve.

A needle the Herald found was confirmed as having been supplied by the Auckland needle exchange programme.

A health inspector was due to inspect the playground early today before children arrived.

It is the second recent find of dumped syringes - about 30 were found at a Mairangi Bay bus shelter two weeks ago. It is understood that a child was pricked after handling those needles.

The four children jabbed at Miranda Reserve were from one family. The eldest, Rozlynn Brown, told the Herald that she, her two sisters and brother were playing at the park when they found the plastic bag of syringes and needles.

Her 5-year-old sister, Celes, and 3-year-old brother, Tyrone, put their hands in the bag and pricked themselves.

Rozlynn said she then pricked herself trying to take one of the needles off Celes, and then also pricked Celes accidentally.

Her other sister, 4-year-old Tilly, found a syringe full of water and drank out of it.

None of the children had any idea that what they were doing was dangerous.

After about an hour, they told their father, Milton, who carefully collected the syringes, which filled two-thirds of a shoebox.

He estimated that there were between 200 and 300 syringes and put them back in the bin at the park.

Health officials said they might attempt to trace the rubbish, which has since been collected.

Mr Brown said he called Avondale police station twice and spoke to someone, but no one followed up the matter with him.

The station's senior officer did not respond to requests for comment last night.

Mr Brown said he would not let his children play in the park any more.

"It makes it a real danger now."

When the Herald visited the park yesterday, a bloody-looking syringe with needle intact was found buried in the bark under the children's swings.

On two occasions, reporters saw children playing in the bark in bare feet.

A lollipop stick was also found which had been pushed into a used syringe, which was crusted with what appeared to be dried blood.

Public health official Dr Nick Jones said anyone who found a syringe should not touch it.

"If the syringes were used, then we have to presume they may have contained viruses."

He said that while the chance of the children contracting HIV was extremely remote - the virus does not survive in the cold - the risk of hepatitis B and C was more threatening.

It took weeks before the body developed antibodies to show whether HIV or hepatitis C infection had taken place.

Parents should check if their children were immunised against hepatitis B, and if they were not they should have them vaccinated.

Dr Jones said that even among injecting drug users in New Zealand HIV was very uncommon.

"Even when a person is pricked with a needle from a known HIV-positive person, the risks of that person developing HIV infection are very low."

Mystery surrounds how the syringes got to the reserve - but their dumping has led to calls for reform of how needles are disposed of after use by drug addicts and diabetics.

Simon Nimmo, national coordinator of the needle exchange programme, said needles were found in public eight to nine times a year. Nearly half those on the programme have hepatitis C.

While more than a million needles were distributed every year only 25 to 30 per cent were returned, Mr Nimmo said.

The problem was that while the needle-exchange programme was legal, drug users could still be arrested for possession of injection equipment and so tended to hoard syringes and secretly dump them.

"As long as the police can charge people for the possession of these things, then people are not going to bring them back - simple as that."

The law surrounding the disposal of needles by diabetics also needed changing, he said, because they were entitled to get rid of them in the domestic rubbish, "which is not a very safe thing to do."