Health-care workers and other harm-reduction advocates opened up a pop-up overdose prevention site across the road from Nanaimo Regional General Hospital this morning after being told they weren't allowed to do so on hospital grounds.
Dr. Jessica Wilder, who works in family and addictions medicine, said that on almost a weekly basis, health workers respond to patients using illicit substances on hospital grounds, but there remains a lack of overdose-prevention services available.
"An ideal world today would have B次元官网网址� me as a doctor providing evidence-based medicine to save the lives of my patients. There have been a lot of controversy and politicization around the work that I do and what we were attempting to do here today is to bring the narrative back to the facts," Wilder said. "The facts are that saving lives is not controversial."
Overdose-prevention sites are monitored locations where individuals are permitted to use their own illicit drugs, with fully equipped medical staff on standby to administer first aid if required.
To date, in Canada.
The doctors intended to set up a site near the intersection of Dufferin Crescent and Boundary Avenue on Monday, Nov. 18, but told media that they were advised by security to leave the premises. RCMP allowed them to move the service to the other side of the street. The pop-up site is planned to run between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. from Nov. 18-22.
"It's really important for me as a physician. I took an oath that for me means that I have to advocate for life-saving services when they're needed for my patients and I must provide those services whenever I'm able to," Wilder said. "The message is a part of this, but really this is about the evidence and the facts and about saving lives."
Groups involved in the pop-up include Moms Stop the Harm, Harm Reduction Nurses Association, Vancouver Island University Harm Reduction Alliance and Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users.
Moms Stop the Harm member Jane McCormick was one of the attendees, holding up signs in support of the initiative. McCormick's 35-year-old son Jeffery died from an overdose.
"He was a very much loved person, he left two children, he was a wonderful worker. He was a regular person and he worked and he loved his kids and his family. My heart is shattered, his dad's heart is shattered..." McCormick said. "He was in the demographic, he was 35 years old in construction, he'd actually gone to treatment twice, first for alcohol addition, then for opoid addiction, then he got himself back together. After his first three-week shift, he came home and used, and two days later he was gone."
She believes that if there had been an accessible safe supply, or had he used at an overdose-prevention site, he would still be alive.
"When he came back and the cravings were so bad because he'd gone off of his Suboxone, he just bought whatever he could. He took that chance and he didn't win. If there was a safe, legal, regulated supply of drugs, if there had been a prevention site close to where he was B次元官网网址� for sure he would have gone there and they would have saved his life. He died alone outside."
Island Health didnB次元官网网址檛 sanction the pop-up overdose prevention site on NRGH grounds. A corresponding site was set up in Victoria.
