The development of services for drug misusers on Mersey

It is 10 yeats since the now famous statement by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs that, The spread of HIV is a gl enter danger to individual and public health than drug misuse. Accordingly, services which aim to minimise HIV risk behaviour by all means should take precedence hi development plans' (ACMD, 1988), and the acceptance, at least for a time, of harm reduction as a legitimate goal for drug service provision. However, 2 years earlier. Mersey Regional Health Authority (MRHA), now part of North West Regional Health Authority, had already planned such an approach in response to the urgent need to prevent the spread of HIV amongst a drug-misusing population estimated to be as high as 20,000 (DHMU, 1990). This paper looks at the development of services on Mersey and at events since then.