opioid overdose every day. It is worth noting that there are many more
nonfatal overdose cases among PWID.
Health risks which are related to PWID also impact public health.
First, a lot of public resources are used for disease treatment and
overdose response. A large amount of money is used for providing
healthcare service for PWID to treat infectious diseases. The CDC
(2019a) indicated the lifetime cost of HIV treatment for one person is
$450,000, and the annual cost for chronic HCV treatment in the United
States is $15 billion. According to one study that estimated the cost of
overdoses, the healthcare system of New York City pays $41 million per
year for these incidents (Behrends et. al, 2019). In addition to money,
other public health resources, such as ambulances, healthcare providers,
and healthcare facilities, are all involved. Since a certain amount of
PWID have unstable housing or are homeless, when an emergency
occurs, they probably need to rely on mostly public resources. Second,
used injection litter is left in public, which impacts the entire
community. Most PWID may already suffer from addiction, so they will
use drugs “wherever they can,” said Kathleen Woodruff DNP, ANP-BC,
clinical assistant professor at USC School of Social Work Department of
Nursing (as cited in Nursing@USC Staff, 2019). Especially for injection
drug users who are homeless, injection in public may be their only
choice. A report from KIRO 7, a Seattle local news station, reported that
in King County, WA, “syringes can be found nearly anywhere in parks”