ODYSSEAS: supervised use of drugs versus bureaucracy in Greece

Ulysses travelled for 10 years before returning to his home island of Ithaca to overthrow the contenders and rule with wisdom and justice. Despite evidence to the contrary, it could take Greece and its authorities 10 years to realise the need to maintain the investment in scaling up harm reduction services for injecting drug users. Previous authors have shown the increase in the number of newly diagnosed HIV infections among injecting drug users in Greece since early 2011. They have also shown the prompt response from the Greek authorities in 2011 and 2012 that led to an expansion of the capacity of the system to distribute clean needles and syringes and offer opioid substitution treatment.