They also experience stigma and discrimination from healthcare workers

However, they are very limited in low-income countries. Even where they do exist, some pharmacists are reluctant to sell needles and syringes or deal with their disposal.Moreover, they rarely offer education and additional healthcare services.
Needle and syringe programme coverage
2012, such as in Malaysia and Australia. Despite progress in some countries, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan and Vietnam have reported a decline in the number of programmes since 2012. Vietnam has dropped the number of needles distributed from 180 per person who injects drugs in 2012 to 98 in 2014
NSPs in Asia are delivered in a number of ways. In some places, fixed sites have been integrated with other facilities such as health clinics and pharmacies. In Laos, there is just one community-based programme on the border with Vietnam. NSP coverage is still too low to have a significant impact on HIV prevalence among injecting drug users, with a lack of human resources, inflexible hours and harsh drug policies cited as barriers to their access.

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