CITY'S OTHER SAFE INJECTION SITE CELEBRATES

While most people focused on the one-year anniversary of Vancouver's
first official safe injection site this week, the Dr. Peter Centre,
which houses the city's other safe injection site, also celebrated its
first anniversary Saturday at its new location in the West End.

The Dr. Peter Centre is a 24-hour care residence and day health
program for impoverished HIV/AIDS patients who suffer from mental
illness, drug addiction or lack of social support.

Maxine Davis, executive director of the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation,
said the move a year ago from a 10-person wing at St. Paul's Hospital
to its new location at 1110 Comox St. meant the centre doubled the
number of people it can help. The expanded centre runs 24 studio
apartments and provides 24-hour care, meals and medication for those
who require short-term housing. It also treats up to 120 patients per
day in its day program, providing them with meals and regular
medication. Twenty-four people are on the waiting list for suites.

The centre was named after Dr. Peter Jepson-Young whose diary of his
battle with AIDS put a human face to the disease while being broadcast
on CBC TV in the early 1990s.

Forty of the 250 patients registered at the centre are addicted to
drugs and use the centre's safe injection site regularly. But Davis
admits drug use is also condoned in the private suites.

"We encourage residents to let us know if they have an addiction,"
said Davis, who added nurses supervise injections. "We're the health
care provider, not the police."

The centre has a staff of 60 nurses and doctors and 75 volunteers, who
run programs, help out in the kitchen and take patients for walks.
Nearly a third of those using the new facility in the past year were
women. Half the patients were gay men and about 20 per cent aboriginal.

Davis said in the past year the facility saw patients who were
increasingly sick while more patients than before were suffering from
neurological and mental disorders.

The increase in the severity of illnesses was partly because most
patients coming to the centre have never been treated for their
illness, said Dr. Julio Montaner, acting director of the B.C. Centre
for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

"These people lead disorganized lifestyles and for the same reason
they cannot find their way to my office, my clinic, or my programs,
they have not found treatment," he said.

For those who have found treatment, the anti-retroviral drugs that can
stop the progress of HIV spreading in the body can also cause nerve
damage, he said.

Many patients have been referred to the centre from the Insite safe
injection site in the Downtown Eastside. While more details wouldn't
be released until Tuesday, Montaner said the centre and the safe
injection site have made a difference in reducing street activity.

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people have HIV/AIDS in B.C.
Approximately 6,000 live in the Lower Mainland.