SAFE INJECTION SITE SAVING LIVES: REPORT

VANCOUVER - The one-year assessment of Vancouver's safe injection site
shows the Downtown Eastside clinic is saving lives, and helping heroin
addicts change their lives.

The report says that clinic staff have been able to save 72 drugs users in
107 incidents since last March. CPR was required in one case.

There have been no deaths at the facility.

There are an average 588 injections at the site every day - with a major
spike in heroin use on "welfare Wednesdays."

"The busiest day that we've had so far, for example, was July 28 when there
were 845 injections during the 18-hour period that we were open," says Dr.
David Marsh, the physician who headed the evaluation.

He says two to four clients a day are referred to addiction treatment
programs, with at least one person a week referred to methadone treatment.

The report says a total of 262 users have been referred to addiction
counselling in the past six months. Another 78 were referred to withdrawal
management programs such as detox.

The average age of the users at clinic is 39. Seventy per cent of them are men.

The study was carried out for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority by the
B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

The clinic is a three-year pilot project sponsored in part by Health
Canada. And Dr. Marsh says he's looking forward to two more years of
detailed evaluation, to find what works and what can be improved.