A SAFE HAVEN FOR ADDICTS

Injection Sites Needed in Halifax, Health Worker Says

A row of gleaming, stainless steel booths sit in a sterile room where
addicts can safely inject their drug of choice.

This is North America's first legal, supervised injection site.

Dr. Michael V. O'Shaughnessy shared slides and stories about the
Vancouver facility, Insite, with a small group of health
professionals and AIDS activists in Halifax on Monday.

"After they inject, they hang around, have a coffee; we have to make
sure they come down a bit before they leave," he said in the meeting
room at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

In September, Health Minister Tony Clement gave permission for the
facility to stay open one more year for further research.

Dianne Bailey, program director at Mainline Needle Exchange, said a
safe injection site is needed in Halifax.

"(With) the amount of needles that we're picking up out in the street
and the number of people in the warmer months that are kind of living
out around the streets in abandoned buildings, I definitely think
we do, maybe not on the same scale as Vancouver, but definitely
something's needed."

She is concerned because groups using the needle exchange program
have changed in recent years.

"The clients are a lot younger, more street involved, more people
(are) HIV positive (and) hepatitis C positive than there were when we
first opened in '92."

Ms. Bailey would not provide statistics on the number of people using
the needle exchange program in Halifax. However in 2004, the
provincial outreach co-ordinator for Mainline told The Chronicle
Herald the program served 60 to 100 users each day.

Ms. Bailey said a facility like Insite could act as a doorway to
other services, such as addiction counselling, detoxification
programs and general health care.

A main goal of Insite is to reduce the spread of diseases like AIDS
and hepatitis C, transmitted through needle-sharing.

Dr. O'Shaughnessy said this is difficult to determine because so many
addicts are already HIV positive, but those who use Insite don't share needles.

"It has pretty much eliminated (the) second-on-the-needle phenomenon."

Safe injection sites are an important piece of a very complicated
puzzle, said Susan Kirkland, principle investigator for the Atlantic
Interdisciplinary Research Network.

The group is researching social and behavioural issues involving
those with hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.

For now, she said, Halifax will have to rely on Mainline Needle
Exchange on Cornwallis Street and the methadone clinic on Gottingen
Street to manage the spread of disease through needle-sharing.

"Given that the Vancouver site is very much a test site and the
federal government's made it clear that there are to be no further
licences, at this point I don't think that's something that's being
explored in the Maritimes," she said, referring to the possibility of
a safe injection site.

Despite that, she noted that the number of HIV infections in Nova
Scotia and P.E.I almost doubled between 2002 and 2004.