WELFARE CHEQUES PUT DEMAND ON INJECTION SITE

Last Wednesday Of Month Shows Spike In Number Of Users

Vancouver's safe-injection site may have to open around the clock to cope
with record demand on Welfare Wednesdays.

On July 28 last month, there were 845 visits to the facility in the
100-block East Hastings.

The site receives 600 visits on a typical day.

The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is thinking of extending its opening
to 24 hours a day from 18 to deal with the spike in demand.

"We're exploring options with regard to addressing the volumes," said
Viviana Zanocco, a spokeswoman for the health authority. "One of those
options might be to extend the hours, another might be to add more staff."

Welfare recipients living in subsidized single-room accommodation get a
welfare cheque for $200 on the last Wednesday of the month.

According to figures obtained by The Province, the safe-injection site has
consistently broken its own records for visits during Welfare Wednesdays
since it opened Sept. 22.

Dan Small of the Portland Hotel Society, which helps run the site, said
records have been broken on every single Welfare Wednesday.

"We've seen dramatic usage of the site," Small said yesterday. "People are
using the supervised injection facility to use clean equipment and to use
[drugs] in a supervised setting.

"When you're hitting numbers of 845 around cheque day, we have to consider
opening it up 24 hours a day."

Ann Livingston, program co-ordinator of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug
Users, said the spike of drug-overdose deaths on Welfare Wednesdays has
also fallen, due in part to the site.

In 2001, 49 Vancouver people died on Wednesdays of illicit drug overdoses.
In 2003, that had fallen to 25.

"I think we're going to see even further evidence of a drop in overdoses,
and a drop in HIV and hep C."

"We won't get the dramatic impact that we would have gotten had we put the
safe sites in when we demanded them, back in 1998. They were hauling bodies
here every day. It was awful."

There are 4,700 addicts in the Downtown Eastside, and the site services
about 500 of them.

There have been no overdose deaths at the site.