Your lifetime risk of stroke, rehabilitation after stroke, pill testing and traditional Chinese medicine

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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Unknown 0:02

This is an ABC podcast.

Dr. Norman Swan 0:06

Hello and welcome to this week's health report with me, Norman Swan. Today, can traditional Chinese medicine help dementia? We have a look at the evidence. The extraordinarily high chances each of us have of experiencing a stroke during our lifetime. significant inadequacies in the care of people with stroke in Australia, and pill testing at music festivals refuses to go away as an issue, mainly because state governments are reluctant to approve pill testing, despite calls by the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Physicians, neither organization known for their radical sympathies. Pauling suggests the majority of voters support pill testing too, and still young people are dying.

Dr. Norman Swan 0:47

Media coverage says there have been six deaths since the summer began. In Victoria, the crossbench is wanting action. St. Kilda Council wants to conduct a pill testing trial, and yet the Labour government in Victoria is refusing to budge, despite setting up a trial of a safe injecting room. In New South Wales, there's growing pressure on the coalition government. So at least the squeamishness is on both sides of the aisle.

What are the lifetime risks of stroke worldwide and why are they so high?

Dr. Norman Swan 1:10

Olivia Willis reports on health for the ABC Science Unit and has been investigating the facts behind pill testing. Welcome back to the Health Report, Olivia. Thanks, Norman. So let's just where in the world do they do pill testing at the moment?

Olivia Willis 1:24

Well, in Europe they refer to it as drug checking and there are services pretty widely available in yeah, kind of across Europe. I think it's between fifteen and twenty countries that kind of routinely have services available at festivals and also in the community where you can actually go to places and get drugs tested. But in Australia we've just had one trial so far, which was at the Groove and the Moo Festival in Canberra last year.

Dr. Norman Swan 1:47

We'll come to just what was done in that trial and the situation Australia. But when you look across Europe, is there evidence that pill testing reduces deaths?

Olivia Willis 1:56

Evidence that it reduces death i is tricky. Like any harm reduction measure, I think harm reduction experts or advocates will point that a clear reduction in deaths can actually sometimes be difficult to show because i as I guess interventions they can be difficult to evaluate. But in terms of reducing harm, yes, the evidence points to the fact that that it can be an effective way to reduce harm. So in in terms of evaluations from the services operating in Europe, that shows that having pill testing services can lead to less drug taking and can help people to consume drugs in a safer way. So whether that's um choosing not to take a drug that they intended to or taking a smaller dose of that drug after they've after they've had it tested.

Dr. Norman Swan 2:36

And this is reminiscent of the debate about uh s needle inje uh um safe ne safe injection rooms and needle exchanges during the early days of the HIV epidemic, where people said, Well, this is going to be a permission license for immoral behaviour and intravenous drug use. Is there a and which in fact wasn't true. Is there any evidence that pill testing, drug testing in increases usage?

Olivia Willis 2:59

No, there's certainly no evidence from from the European trials or the the services that exist there that it would lead to an increase in drug use. And as I said, actually research points to that it could probably decrease um drug use and and decrease um drug associated harm, I suppose. Um and actually the UK, they had their first pill testing trial at a music festival. They published their results from that. I think it was in December, and they found that It was something like one in I think one in five substances tested was not what people expected. And among those people who got the results that, you know, they got a surprising result, that the the pill or the capsule that they handed over didn't have what they thought it did, about two-thirds of them chose to hand over more drugs to be destroyed.

Olivia Willis 3:41

And and researchers in the US and Austria and Germany, and actually some research that's been done in Australia in the early 2000s, made kind of similar findings that if people who people who