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New Las Vegas health vending machine aims to help with HIV and drug overdoses

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The Health District’s new vending machine
Photo: Wade Vandervort

Las Vegas health officials hope a new vending machine that dispenses free, clean needles and other items will help prevent the spread of HIV and drug overdoses.

The machine is located at the Southern Nevada Health District office at 280 South Decatur Blvd.

The machine dispenses items including syringe kits, hygiene kits, wound care kits, hormone injection kits, safer sex kits, pregnancy tests and nasal naloxone, which is used for emergency treatment of opioid overdoses.

“This public health vending machine provides a mechanism to directly supply comprehensive harm-reduction supplies, which can prevent drug overdose, HIV and hepatitis C to the community,” Health District spokesman David Sheehan said.

HIV and hepatitis C are transmitted through blood, and most people get HIV through sex or by sharing needles or syringes, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Nevada, 441 people were diagnosed with HIV last year, according to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.

Clark County was among 48 counties that accounted for over 50% of HIV diagnoses in the U.S. in 2016 and 2017, according to the CDC.

The vending machine is the seventh in Southern Nevada, with others located at addiction treatment centers, community centers and primary care clinics, the Health District says.

A study by the Health District and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found 41 deaths were prevented in Clark County in the 12 months after the first vending machines with naloxone were placed in 2019.

The newest public health vending machine can be accessed Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

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Tags: News, Health
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Grace Da Rocha is a graduate of the journalism school at California State University, Northridge, where she was a reporter ...

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