NURSE CALLS FOR MORE DETOX BEDS

Burnaby council heard from yet another voice recently calling for a solution
to the dire addiction problems of the Lower Mainland.

Rock Chalifour, spokesman for the Addiction Treatment Advocacy Group, made a
presentation to council in which he warned that a lack of detox beds in the
Fraser Health Authority is allowing the region's drug problems to rage out
of control.

Addiction treatment funding has been cut from between $750,000 and $1.2
million in recent FHA budgets, Chalifour said, and, as such, he asked
council to call on the FHA and provincial government to halt all cuts until
all alternative funding sources have been explored.

"The Fraser Health Authority has spent $440 million on treating drug-related
illnesses and only $2 million to treat the disease of addiction itself,"
Chalifour said.

"With addiction, there are enormous costs to our courts, policing and health
services _ and this money could be better spent."

Chalifour, a registered nurse working in Royal Columbian Hospital's
emergency psychiatric ward, said he encounters several patients each day who
are frustrated that they can not find a way out of their cycle of addiction.

In all there are only 22 public detox beds available in the Fraser Health
Authority, Chalifour said, an area that reaches "from Burnaby to Boston
Bar."

All of those beds are located at Maple Cottage treatment centre in New
Westminster, which Chalifour said is will lose two beds when it soon moves
to a new location.

"As it is now, finding access to this kind of resource is extremely
difficult," Chalifour said. "These people don't know where to turn _. They
come to the hospitals, but we can't help them. I'm very saddened to say
'Sorry, there's no treatment for you here, there's no treatment today.'"

Chalifour estimates that there are 130,000 substance abusers in the FHA
region, with 19,000 of them categorized as "heavily addicted."

While the waiting list for a bed at Maple Cottage is only about three to
five days, Chalifour said even that is too long for many addicts to wait.

"Often these people will come to the point where they've lost their job,
their family _ they want to end their life, and they realize they need help
- - but that period of clarity only lasts one or two days," he said.

City staff will review Chalifour's comments and include their findings with
a forthcoming report on the problem.