NUMBERS IN ON INJECTION SITE

The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority spent $1.4 million in 2003/2004
to operate the city's supervised injection site in the Downtown
Eastside, the bulk of it-$829,000-spent on "community health services."

The spending figures are contained in budget documents obtained by the
Courier under the Freedom of Information Act. The $829,000, however,
isn't broken down to explain what constitutes community health services.

Viviana Zanocco, spokesperson for the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority, said $300,000 was dedicated to research funding and the
remaining $529,000 went to pay staff of the PHS Community Services
Society.

PHS, a non-profit organization, operates Insite at 139 East Hastings
in partnership with Vancouver Coastal Health. The B.C. Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS is the main researcher in the three-year
scientific project.

Additional costs included $370,000 in nursing and medical staff wages
and $230,000 in non-labour costs, including equipment, rent, office
supplies and surgical supplies.

Mark Townsend, a coordinator at PHS, said the money has been well
spent and helped reduce the deaths of drug addicts who would otherwise
be injecting drugs in an alley.

"The bottom line is that drug addiction is with us all the time, and
it's a matter of do we want to just have it out on the street, and do
we want people to die? I personally don't want people to die. I've had
to meet parents at the airport and say your son has died."

Townsend said about 15 PHS staff work at Insite, with about four to
five per shift at the 18-hour a day centre. They earn $16.24 per hour,
plus benefits.

Their duties include reception, handing out injection kits, cleanup,
peer counselling, encouraging addicts to get counselling and supplying
clients with food and beverages.

"If you were trying to grasp some special title [of what Portland
staff does at Insite], I'm not sure what it would be," Townsend said.
"It's kind of mental health worker cum kind of cleaner cum kind of
checking someone who's not overdosing kind of advocate."

Some have experience working in mental health circles and about
one-quarter of the PHS staff are former addicts-a fact Townsend
defends as being crucial to attracting addicts to the site.

Before Insite opened in September 2003, some in the community feared
addicts wouldn't use the site because they would be targeted by police
or health workers, Townsend said.

Having former addicts on site gives addicts a sense of comfort, he
said.

"If I was in charge of a gay men's drop-in, and we had no gay men
working there, we would be seen as insane. What we wanted to do was
get people off of the street and make them safer and reduce the number
of injections on the streets. We have to make it as low threshold as
possible."

A study on Insite released in September by the B.C. Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS said the facility has been "very well managed
and the staff is highly rated by the clients."

An average of nearly 600 injections per day occur at the injection
site, according to the study. Although there have been more than "100
observed overdoses," there have been no deaths, and only one episode
where CPR was required, the study said.

A large number of referrals made to addiction counselling and
"withdrawal management services" have also occurred in the year of its
operation, the study added.

Other operating costs for 2003/2004, included $49,000 in general
medical surgical supplies, $32,000 in dressings, $33,000 in waste
removal and $2,700 in training.

The site is open 18 hours a day, seven days a week. It is being funded
by the federal and provincial governments.