People new to running a needle exchange tend to think the supply list is “syringes.” Syringes are maybe a third of it. A program that stocks only the needles and runs out of everything else is a program that stops being useful fast.
The working list runs syringes in the gauges your participants actually use, plus cookers, cottons, sterile water, alcohol pads, and tourniquets. Then the disposal side: sharps containers in pocket, table, and van sizes, and a disposal contract that genuinely picks up on schedule. Skip the disposal logistics and you’ll drown in full containers within a month.
Then the add-ons that turn an exchange into a real point of contact: wound-care dressings and irrigation for the abscesses and soft-tissue infections you’ll see weekly, hygiene kits, PPE for staff and volunteers, and naloxone with a thirty-second teach for every kit. These are the supplies that make people come back.
We keep the full category breakdown and the storage-and-resupply discipline in our harm reduction supplies hub. The thing that keeps a program running isn’t any single item — it’s a par-level system across every site so nothing runs dry on the floor.
Stock the whole list, not just the syringes, and the exchange becomes the front door to care for people who avoid every other one.