SOUTH VAN NEEDS 24/7 HEALTH CENTRE TO FIGHT DRUG PROBLEM

An emerging health crisis in South Vancouver needs immediate attention,
says the South Vancouver Community Health Society.

Bert Massiah, spokesman for the society, said a combination of soaring drug
abuse and South Vancouver's demographics is a recipe for disaster.

The area has more single parents, children and youth, youths not in school,
married couples with three or more children and non-English-speaking
residents than any other part of Vancouver.

Massiah said his group has been lobbying the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority for the past three years to establish a 24-hour health contact
centre in South Vancouver.

Currently, South Vancouver only has a health office, which is open from 9
a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week.

Massiah said the South Vancouver Community Health Society wants the city
and health authority to create a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week health centre in
the new Sunset Community Centre, where needles and condoms would be dispensed.

"South Vancouver is such a traditional community and there is a lot of
opposition. The concern is drugs and all these horrible people," he said.
"That's why I remind people any chance I get that less than 10 per cent of
the young people in the Downtown Eastside were born there. The rest came
from places like South Vancouver."

Massiah said South Vancouver community groups began to notice an increase
in open drug use and prostitution in their neighbourhood about three years ago.

"What triggered it is they found some needles on the grounds of the
Salvation Army care home in 2001. The executive director at the time was a
member of the health board's advisory committee and he came to us and said
'Look what I've found'," Massiah said. "We talked to some of the business
people on Fraser and they said they were seeing more needles in the back
alleys. We did more asking around and began seeing there were real problems
emerging."

In response, the South Vancouver Community Health Society contacted Art
Steinmann, a consultant and former head of the provincial government's
Alcohol and Drug Education Service, to help develop a pilot project to deal
with drug abuse.

Last month, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority agreed to fund the first
phase of the project, which will cost $20,000 and involves creating an
advisory committee, conducting research in the community and determining
the feasibility of a second phase. If phase two is approved by the health
authority, at a cost of $46,000, a key goal of the nine-month project will
be to provide drug abuse prevention information to grandparents of
immigrant families.

Massiah said grandparents are often left to raise children in immigrant
families where both parents work. As those children move from elementary to
high school, they face pressure to use alcohol and drugs. "The parents are
often working hard to establish themselves in the country and a lot of kids
are raised by grandparents and often English is a second language in the
home. We have to reach out to those adults."