{"id":70852,"date":"2016-02-18T22:10:51","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T03:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=70852"},"modified":"2016-02-18T22:10:51","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T03:10:51","slug":"vancouver-and-victoria-consider-supervised-injection-in-health-centres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/02\/18\/vancouver-and-victoria-consider-supervised-injection-in-health-centres\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver and Victoria consider supervised injection in health centres"},"content":{"rendered":"
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VANCOUVER\u2014British Columbia health officials are considering offering supervised-injection services in community health clinics, triggered by a new federal government and a spike in fentanyl overdoses.<\/p>\n

Health authorities in Vancouver and Victoria have begun discussions about providing the services in clinics that already help people with addictions, for example, through clean needle programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation here is getting worse,\u201d said Dr. Mark Lysyshyn of Vancouver Coastal Health in an interview Thursday. \u201cWe just see that offering supervised-injection services is a more viable way to prevent some of the harm that’s being caused right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discussions mark a shift for harm-reduction proponents who were long stymied by the previous Conservative government. A rise in overdose deaths from the dangerous opioid fentanyl has added to the urgency, officials say.<\/p>\n

Health authorities must apply for an exemption from federal drug laws in order to offer supervised-injection services. Lysyshyn said Vancouver Coastal Health is considering applying for a single exemption to cover multiple sites.<\/p>\n

Community health centres are separate from hospitals and offer a range of services. It’s not yet known which ones would offer supervised injection, but the authority plans to target those that already offer harm reduction to drug users, he said.<\/p>\n

Lysyshyn said the authority was encouraged by Health Canada’s recent approval of the Dr. Peter Centre, an HIV-AIDS clinic that has offered supervised injection along with other services in Vancouver’s west end since 2002.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re sort of in a new world now,\u201d he said. \u201cThere’s been a lot of interest in Canada in harm reduction and a belief that it’s been the right thing to do for people and that it saves lives, but we haven’t been able to move on that in the past 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The B.C. Coroners Service has said overdose deaths are on the rise in the province and a growing portion are linked to fentanyl, a potent synthetic that is often cut with other drugs. Thirty per cent of overdose deaths involved fentanyl in 2015, up from five per cent in 2012.<\/p>\n

Island Health spokeswoman Suzanne Germain said the authority has long considered supervised injection an important harm-reduction model, but only recently began active discussions with Victoria city officials and police about offering the service in community sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe major factor for us has been the change in attitude at the federal government level. I think it was really clear under the previous government that something like this would not be approved.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Conservatives were in power, the federal government waged a court battle for years against Vancouver’s only stand-alone supervised-injection site, Insite, eventually losing at the Supreme Court of Canada. It also brought in legislation that made it more challenging to open new sites.<\/p>\n

Health Canada spokesman Sean Upton said it would be premature to speculate on whether the Liberal government would repeal the legislation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government of Canada is committed to following an evidence-based approach to assessing applications for supervised consumption sites and to assessing applications under the existing legal framework without undue hindrance or delay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall said Vancouver and Victoria need more supervised-injection services. He said stand-alone centres like Insite work in communities with a high concentration of drug users, but they are an expensive model.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a number of clinics that are already serving this population and they’re already partly engaged in treatment, it’s a lot more affordable to build it into an existing facility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may also incent people who weren’t engaged in primary care or addictions treatment to come in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER\u2014British Columbia health officials are considering offering supervised-injection services in community health clinics, triggered by a new federal government and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":47413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,37,16],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-70852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-health","category-news","tag-original","mauthors-laura-kane","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}