{"id":452,"date":"2012-07-31T12:02:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T12:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/deputy-crowe-warns-of-infected-heroin\/"},"modified":"2012-07-31T12:02:19","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T12:02:19","slug":"deputy-crowe-warns-of-infected-heroin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/deputy-crowe-warns-of-infected-heroin\/","title":{"rendered":"Deputy Crowe warns of infected heroin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deputy Crowe warns of infected heroin
<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe, who has been a long time member of the <\/span>Tallaght Drugs Task Force has expressed alarm that a batch of heroin contaminated with anthrax might be part of a shipment of drugs<\/span> that is bound for Ireland.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Tallaght based Deputy was commenting on a warning from the Health Service Executive (HSE) who have alerted drugs services and health staff to the possibility of drug-takers using heroin which has been contaminated with anthrax.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe said: \u201cThe warning from the HSE is in response to the hospitalisation of a drug user in Scotland suffering from the effects of anthrax poisoning. Irish heroin supplies are often closely linked to what is being used in Scotland and I would urge people to take heed of this warning and be aware of the risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2000 eight heroin users in Ireland died after injecting themselves with the drug that was contaminated with a separate bacterium. In 2009-2012 anthrax infected over 100 heroin users in Scotland who were poisoned by the same batch of heroin, leading to 14 deaths. It is thought that the contaminated drugs had been imported from Afghanistan via in Turkey, where it had been smuggled in containers which were disguised with infected goat-hide.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe urged those with close contacts with heroin users to be aware of the signs of potential infection.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe signs and symptoms for injecting drug users,\u201d he continued, \u201cinclude marked swelling and redness at an injection site, which may or may not be painful, abscess or ulcer at an injection site, and possible fever, headache or nausea.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the person has been smoking heroin they may develop a flu-like illness, which leads to breathlessness and they may also develop extensive skin lesions (often with swollen or blackened surrounding areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cClearly there is a very real danger from contaminated heroin and the The National Health Service in Lanarkshire, where the affected user in Scotland is from, has advised heroin users to avoid using the drug if possible or if they have to smoke heroin instead of injecting it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would echo this advice and would like to commend the HSE for giving this early warning and for preparing its staff to be on the lookout for Irish drug users displaying similar symptoms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deputy Crowe warns of infected heroin Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe, who has been a long time member of the Tallaght Drugs Task Force has expressed alarm that a batch of heroin contaminated with anthrax might be part of a shipment of drugs that is bound for Ireland. The Tallaght based Deputy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}