Total number of syringes given out per year
There is now a National Needle Exchange Monitoring System to systematically collect data on injecting equipment provision in England, so it should be possible to get relevant data for your area. As for other variables within the tool, local knowledge may be useful in determining the best estimate of actual current provision.

Also, it may be of interest to see the impact of changing this variable on the overall estimate of coverage.

Counting injecting equipment
The coverage calculator asks you to enter the ‘Number of syringes given out per year’. By syringes we mean the number of complete sets of injecting equipment (i.e. a needle and a syringe together counting as one set).

When looking at equipment distribution data it is important not to over estimate injecting equipment provision. You should be aware that many needle and syringe programmes give injectors:

• syringes with needles attached; and/or
• syringe barrels; and
• separate needles;

and the recording of injecting equipment distribution will usually include a count of all three.

Where barrels and separate needles are given, the number of needles often exceeds the number of syringes because people are given extra ones to draw up, and replace those that become blunt through reuse. Because of this there is clearly no case for adding together the numbers of needles and numbers of syringe barrels and entering this, as this would only distort upwards any estimate of coverage.

Hence, the tool only requires an estimate of number of syringes provided (i.e syringes with a fixed needle plus syringe barrels) to be entered in order to provide an estimate of coverage.

Of course, were the number of needles provided for injecting fewer than the number of syringe barrels, this figure would be added to the number of syringes with needles attached to give a total for syringe sets provided, but consultation feedback has suggested this is unlikely.