This is a politically motivated break up of effective NHS services. It also risks the lives of Manchester residents. One of the consequences of this privatisation intuitive by Manchester city council is the closure of dedicated needle exchange provision across the city. The Waterloo project in Cheetham Hill was set up by volunteers, with support of the local community atthe height of Manchester's drug wars. The project a the site serves hundreds of injectors including many involved in the sex industry, who are homeless, including some recent émigrés form eastern Europe where HIV rates are sky high due to the lack of such provsion. The closure of the service in two weeks time risks putting not just the injectors but he wider population at risk of a new epidemic of HIv. This decision will put back the clock 20'years. Manchester pioneered the development of harm reduction services that contained an HIV epidemic that was threatened in the 1980s. Thosemin the council who have made these decisions may well end up counting the cost in human lives.