SAFE-INJECTION SITES A SUCCESS, SAYS OFFICIAL

Pilot Program: We Need More, Adds Drug Policy CO-Ordinator

It's time to make safe-injection sites part of B.C.'s health-care
system, says provincial health officer Perry Kendall.

Two years after Vancouver's safe-injection-site opened, Kendall has
ruled the experiment a success. The Downtown Eastside facility is
reducing overdoses, preventing HIV and hepatitis C infections and
getting drug addicts into treatment, Kendall says.

The pilot program at 139 East Hastings, which opened in September
2003, is North America's first supervised-injection facility.

Kendall said most of the 6,000 IV-drug users in the Downtown Eastside
are currently shooting up on the street. Only one in 10 use the site
daily, and "there's probably room for more."

Kendall concedes that finding locations for other injection sites may
pose a challenge: "In general, people are quite in favour. They're
just not quite sure they want it in their back yard."

Donald MacPherson, the city's drug-policy co-ordinator, sees the need
for at least one or two more sites in the Downtown Eastside.

"We should be treating these facilities in a much more low-key fashion
than we do," says MacPherson. "And we should have enough sites to deal
with the need for them."

Ann Livingstone of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU)
says there's a need for an extra four or five injection sites in the
Downtown Eastside alone. And she doesn't want authorities to wait
until the project ends in 2006.

Viviana Zanocco, speaking for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority,
says the agency will await the final evaluation of the site before
deciding to open another.

"We've got to make sure this works," she said. "People want to know
what the outcome of the scientific and research part is before any
other community or any neighbourhood opens their doors to this. If we
can prove to them . . . why it works, then it's easier to make a case."

[sidebar]

ABOUT THE INJECTION SITE

- - North America's first safe-injection site opened in September 2003
as a three-year pilot study. Victoria spent $1.2 million renovating
the site at 139 East Hastings. It costs $2 million a year to run the
site. At the end of 2006, Health Canada experts will spend a year
analyzing the data.

- - The safe-injection site gets 630 daily visits, or 18,000 a month.
That's up from the 588 per day in 2004.

- - There are 12 booths and a public-health nurse on duty. The average
visit lasts 20 minutes. There have been at least 200 overdoses but no
deaths. More than 1,000 people have been referred this year to
addiction counselling services.