CSCS Ottawa - video

Coming soon to Ontario: supervised injection sites

Greg — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 16:01:25 +0000

TVO's The Agenda hosts an excellent in-depth discussion of the benefits of supervised injection sites and the pressing need in Ottawa & Toronto with Joe Cressy and Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi.

Last July, Toronto approved the establishment of three safe injection sites and now, in an effort to battle opioid overdose deaths, the province has agreed to fund those sites and one in Ottawa. Toronto Councillor Joe Cressy has been a strong advocate for the public health benefits of such facilities. Dr. Bayoumi is the co-author of the 2012 TOSCA report on the harm reduction potential of safe injection sites in Ottawa and Toronto.

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Militer pour un centre d'injection supervisé à Ottawa, une porte à la fois

Greg — Sat, 07 May 2016 04:00:00 +0000

Des membres d'un groupe qui réclame un centre d'injection supervisé à Ottawa cogneront aux portes des résidents de la Côte-de-Sable, samedi.

La direction du centre de santé communautaire du quartier aimerait accueillir un centre d'injection supervisé dans ses locaux de la rue Nelson.

Les responsables veulent offrir un lieu sécuritaire pour tenter de réduire le nombre de surdoses et de seringues souillées dans les lieux publics.

Le Centre de santé communautaire Côte-de-Sable a tenu des consultations publiques le mois dernier et va maintenant à la rencontre des résidents du quartier pour leur parler du projet et répondre à leurs questions.

Cette campagne fait partie des conditions pour l'ouverture d'un centre d'injections supervisé.

Les critères pour mettre sur pied de telles structures ont été resserrés en 2015, forçant les groupes qui désirent le faire à fournir des preuves scientifiques et médicales du bien-fondé du service.

Ils doivent aussi consulter le voisinage, le bureau de la santé publique, le service de police et les conseillers municipaux.

Le maire et le Service de police d'Ottawa n'appuient pas le projet, notamment parce qu'ils craignent une augmentation de la criminalité dans le secteur.

Source: Radio-Canada

Ottawa may need 'more than 1' drug injection site, city's top doctor says

Greg — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 18:30:17 +0000

The City of Ottawa's top doctor says supervised drug injection sites "save lives," and said if the city chooses to welcome the facilities, it may need more than one.

"Safer, or supervised consumption sites are an unquestioned part of the spectrum of health services," said Dr. Isra Levy, the city's chief medical officer of health.

"Do we need one in Ottawa? We may need more than one."

"The issue that then becomes part of this conversation is, what about access? To get good access, we may want to be looking at things like mobile services, we may want to be looking at services in other, existing, health facilities."

Since Toronto public health officials announced last month they're moving ahead with plans to open three supervised injection sites in that city, advocates for supervised injection sites (or SIS) have been calling on Ottawa Public Health to follow suit.

Levy released a statement Thursday in which he praised the effectiveness of supervised injected sites, but despite his praise, he stopped short of openly calling for one here.

"Evidence has shown that SIS save lives and offer other positive impacts for affected individuals, their loved ones, and the community at large. SIS, as a public health intervention, is well-established. They must be considered as part of any comprehensive approach in working with and treating people who inject drugs," he wrote.

But he added that he was "sensitive to, and take very seriously, the legitimate concerns expressed around public safety and the idea of supervised injection services in our city."

"We need to ensure that any SIS's in Ottawa will use the right model for those accessing services in this city, and for the communities in which they live," said Levy.

Supervised injection sites provide a hygienic environment where people with addictions can inject drugs under the supervision of staff, instead of covertly, potentially reducing the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C, while also providing an opportunity for health and social service workers to provide treatment and counseling.

Supervised injection sites also help reduce overdoses and community issues such as public drug use and discarded needles, Levy wrote.

Both Ottawa mayor Jim Watson and police chief Charles Bordeleau have spoken out against allowing such sites in the city.

Watson has repeatedly said public money would be better spent on treatment programs, while Bordeleau has expressed concern that the area around such a site would become a haven for the drug trade and increase the risk to public safety.

But Levy said Ottawa Public health is already engaged in harm-reduction strategies. Last year the agency — through the the OPH needle and syringe program — provided service close to 20,000 times and handed out some 775,000 needles.

Source: CBC News

Ottawa supervised injection site consultations begin

Greg — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In less than two years addicts in the city of Ottawa could have a safe, clean environment to do drugs.

A public consultation took place Monday at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre about a proposal to open the capital’s first supervised injection site at the community health centre. The intervention program has been applauded by many health care professionals as an effective method to reduce overdoses, while also reducing the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C.

“Supervised injection services have been proven to reduce public injections, to reduce overdose deaths and to reduce behaviours associated with acquiring HIV and Hep C,” said Rob Boyd with the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre.

The first supervised injection site was opened in Vancouver in 2003. The polarizing program allows addicts to inject drugs under the supervision of health care professionals trained to handle emergency situations.

In order to open, staff behind the proposal need to get an exemption from Canada’s drug possession and trafficking laws. That approval, given by the Federal Minister of Health, comes on the recommendation of numerous players including the public, mayor, head of police, public health and other local officials.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson was unavailable for an interview Monday, but his staff wrote in an email that “the Mayor’s position has not changed.”

Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau told CTV Ottawa has concerns with supervised injection sites including the potential for increased crime and the idea of a "no-go site" around the premise where officers are asked not to charge addicts carrying illegal drugs.

"We've always had some serious concerns around this type of facility," he told CTV Ottawa. "But we'd like to see a plan. We haven't seen a plan yet. We'd like to know the location. We don't know the hours of operation," he added.

Boyd hopes his group’s application will be filed in the Fall, with an ideal grand opening sometime in late 2017.

Source: CTV News Ottawa

Donna May believes a safe injection site could have saved her daughter

Greg — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 16:29:04 +0000

It's been just a little more than two years since Donna May, the mother of a dead drug addict, came to Ottawa to plead for a safe injection site in the nation's capital.

Her message couldn't have been more clear or more heartbreaking.

"Mine is a hard story to tell. If you have already formed an opinion, based on what you've been told, or educated by what your community leaders have guided you to believe, I used to be one of you," she said back in October 2013.

"There is no worse blind man than the one who does not want to see. I changed my opinion completely and my hope in sharing my story is to at least open your mind."

May, who lives in Toronto, was feeling safe in her suburban lifestyle when her daughter began taking drugs.

With her story, she could have been speaking directly to me -and to many of my suburban friends and thousands of others who just inherently feel without any real justification that safe injection sites are absolutely wrong.

The good news about her appearance calling for safe injection sites is that May did cause many of us in the room to think more thoughtfully about our somewhat instinctive and very negative reaction to safe injection sites.

For sure, it's a hard sell.

Both Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Ottawa Police Chief Chuck Bordeleau have publicly come out against them.

No surprise there.

There just seems to be something so wrong to not just sanction but enable drug use.

Still very hard to get your head around.

May called on the crowd gathered in downtown Ottawa for a public discussion on safe injection sites -- admitting that she was so ashamed of her daughter, some of her own friends were unaware she even had one.

It wasn't until her daughter was dying, that they reconnected and learned from one another what the other had been going through over the years.

Supervised consumption sites are public health facilities that offer a safe, hygienic place where people can use their own drugs under medical supervision.

Canada's first supervised injection site, Insite, has been operating since 2003 in downtown Vancouver.

The evidence from Insite -- and from more than 90 such sites around the world -- suggests that supervised consumption sites reduce the spread of diseases such as HIV, prevent overdose deaths, and improve access to addiction treatment programs. They have also been shown to encourage cleaner, safer streets by reducing public drug use and drug equipment litter.

A recently-released study is bound to renew that debate.

New research is making a financial argument in its call for opening five supervised-injection sites across Ontario, including two in Ottawa.

New research suggests it makes strong financial sense given the increasing effectiveness of hepatitis C treatment.

In fact, the study says there's a 90% chance that safer injection sites in Ottawa just makes financial sense.

Unfortunately for proponents, it's just an incredibly hard sell.

In Ottawa, there's a organization called the Campaign for Safer Consumption Sites in Ottawa, formed in response to what the group describes as an ongoing health crisis.

"Ottawa has Ontario's highest rate of new HIV infection among injection drug users. Eleven per cent of people who inject drugs in Ottawa are infected with HIV, while 70% have contracted hepatitis C. Someone dies of drug overdose every 8 days in our city -- deaths that could be prevented with timely medical intervention," the group's website states.

But numbers just don't beat emotion.

And almost certainly, if I didn't have kids myself, I wouldn't have heard any part of May's message.

But to hear her state that she unequivocally believes a safe injection site could have saved her daughter, well it makes you pause, pause and wonder.

Just because I've never faced what May endured doesn't weaken her message.

But May accomplished much of why she came to Ottawa to speak.

She got people thinking.

That of course, is all May ever asked for.

By Susan Sherring
Source: Ottawa Sun

Nurses want supervised injection sites to be an election issue this fall

Greg — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 04:00:00 +0000

A woman sits on a cardboard box in the middle of a downtown sidewalk. She holds a needle, looks for a vein, and shoots up in broad daylight. It’s the reality of an addict – with nowhere to go.

Kelly – who only wants his first name used – was there once. After he got hit by a bus, he started taking morphine. His girlfriend had used intravenous drugs, and that’s when he started injecting them himself. He started in 1995 and used for a decade, relapsing again a couple years ago. At 43, he now takes methadone.

“I have been homeless down here and have had to use drugs on the street,” he told Global News. “I think anybody with any sanity would rather have somewhere safe they could go, and not be disturbed by the police or other drug users.”

Such places do exist in Canada: supervised injection sites. But they’re rare – and a group of nurses and nursing students wants to change that by making it an election issue.

Ottawa nursing professor Marilou Gagnon recently started a grassroots coalition called Nurses for Supervised Injection Sites. Gagnon says the sites aren’t just places for people to inject drugs in a safer environment – it’s a place to get educated, and a way to link a marginalized group with treatment and health services. It can also save lives, by reducing overdoses and testing for diseases.

“This has been a big issue for us, because we want to provide care, and we feel like so far the government has really set up roadblocks for us,” she said.

That roadblock is a new law recently passed by the Conservative government, which makes it very difficult to open a safe injection site. The law, which stems from a Supreme Court decision, requires sites to comply with 26 specific criteria, including community and police support. The Conservatives defend their position, saying communities deserve an equal say.

Right now, there’s only one place where an exemption to the law exists: Insite, located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Former user Sean LeBlanc, who now runs Ottawa’s Drug Users Advocacy League, says these facilities can help people.

“The good thing about every supervised injection site I’ve visited, is that there are services there, and people get linked up with them,” he said. “It’s basically the first step in treatment for a lot of people.”

On the campaign trail, opposition parties support the nurses’ call for more safe injection sites.

“Harm reduction works,” Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said last week. “The Liberal party supports evidence-based policy, and as such we support not just projects like Insite, but properly-implemented projects like it across the country.”

The NDP supports them too, but with caveats for community consultation.

“This, to us, is a public health issue. People are dying of disease and overdoses and we need to address it,” said Victoria NDP candidate Murray Rankin.

But the Conservatives stand by their law – arguing drug addicts need treatment, not safe houses.

“We cannot just willy-nilly put heroin injection sites across the country like Justin Trudeau wants,” said former health minister and Alberta Conservative candidate, Rona Ambrose. “At the end of the day we want people to get off of drugs. Heroin destroys lives, and it kills people.”

For his part, Kelly thinks the sites could get people off drugs.

“You’d have access to nurses, involved in treatment programs or detoxes, who could help people who are sort of still injecting but want something more out of their lives.”

It’s an outcome both sides of the debate want to see – although they just can’t agree on the best way to get there.

By Laura Stone
Source: Global News

Ottawa Overdose Awareness Day rally 2015

Greg — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 17:00:00 +0000

Coverage of Overdose Awareness Day in Ottawa on CBC.

Jennifer Bigelow shared her own personal story of drug use and overdose with CBC's Omar Dabaghi-Pacheco. In the extended interview below, she calls on politicians to stop playing games with people's lives and open supervised consumption services in Ottawa.

Advocates for overdose prevention rally at Ottawa city hall

Greg — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 16:00:00 +0000

Drug users, recovering addicts and sober allies demanded local supervised safe injection sites and more access to naloxone — a substance that works as an antidote to overdose — during a rally on International Overdose Awareness Day Monday.

A group of about 50 people protested at the annual event, organized by the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre and held at the Human Rights Memorial by city hall on Elgin Street. Set on the monument were 45 pairs of shoes, each a testament to one of the lives lost to drug overdoses in Ottawa last year.

Jennifer Bigallow, a drug user who has been battling addiction for more than 30 years, said that a supervised injection site in downtown Ottawa could be very beneficial.

“I’ve seen personally, I don’t know how many times just downtown, people OD-ing, their eyes rolling in the back of their heads and falling over,” she said. “Countless, countless times. If there was a safe injection site down there, that wouldn’t happen.”

Bigallow suffered three overdoses herself, including one for which she was “under for four, five hours.”

“I’m very lucky to have survived it,” she said. “I count my blessings every day that I survived it. But many people don’t survive it.”

Last week, a coalition of nurses and nursing students announced their plan to try to put injection sites on the agenda during the federal election campaign. Called Nurses for Supervised Injection Services, the group is encouraging others to vote for parties that support the creation of more sites throughout Canada.

The Conservative Party, which has fought Canada’s only supervised injection site for drug users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, is the only one of the major parties that does not support the expansion of such sites on a national level.

Locally, however, both Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and police Chief Charles Bordeleau are on the record as opposing supervised injection sites.

But Monday’s protest wasn’t just about fighting for the controversial injection sites.

According to Rob Boyd, director of a program at Sandy Hill Community Health Centre that offers harm reduction and health services to drug users and sex workers, one of the biggest issues faced in overdose awareness is raising the red flag for people who aren’t aware they may be at risk.

Although the city has made positive strides, he said, including Ottawa Public Health’s Peer Overdose Prevention Program that targets “people who would use a needle exchange,” a large portion of potential overdose candidates are still not being accounted for.

“There’s a lot of at-risk people out there who would never use a needle exchange,” he said. “They don’t inject their drugs, they don’t associate with that type of community, and they don’t even know they’re at risk. Those are the people that are hardest to reach for us.”

In particular, Boyd cautioned that opiate-based pain medications are one of the reasons why supervised injection sites aren’t a catch-all remedy, and another reason why naloxone should be made more readily available.

“Right now, it’s (got) some limited access only through certain programs like Ottawa Public Health,” he said. “We would like to see more programs be able to provide that service including ours, including methadone programs, correctional facilities. We want to see it at addiction treatment facilities.”

According to Ottawa paramedic Paul Morneau, the paramedic service responded to more than 2,600 calls between Kinburn and Cumberland relating to drug overdoses in 2014 — a 30 per cent increase over the previous year.

This, said Boyd, is why the annual Overdose Awareness Day rally is so vital.

“I think that people are generally not that much aware,” he said. “This is not on their radar, which is a bit alarming because it ought to be on their radar.”

By Patrick Smith
Source: Ottawa Citizen

The Limits of Compassion

Greg — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 22:15:08 +0000

The conversation about supervised injection sites in Ottawa is frequently dominated by experts and politicians, while those who would benefit most from a site are not heard.

In this new video, current and former drug users share their stories and their hopes for more compassionate health care services in Ottawa.

"The Limits of Compassion" was made by CSCS Ottawa volunteer Michael Cumming, with thanks to DUAL Ottawa and members of our community for their participation.

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Drug overdose deaths can be curbed with compassion

Greg — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 18:45:18 +0000

Lives can be saved by reducing the stigma around drug overdose and making an overdose-reversing drug more readily available, according to people at a rally in downtown Ottawa Friday.

The rally, held before Sunday’s International Overdose Awareness Day, commemorated 32 people killed by drug overdoses in Ottawa over the last year by laying out 32 pairs of shoes on the Human Rights Monument.

Jordon MacLean said he’s survived an overdose and stopped using six years ago, but it was hard to get clean when he was being judged for his addiction.

"Drugs end up being your best friend, they become like a warm blanket on a cold day," he said.

"It's that ‘ah’ moment of ‘This is good for me. I can trust it. It doesn't judge me.'"

"It's people like me who are also vulnerable to overdose. It's not just people who are living on the margins of society," said Rob Boyd of the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre.

"This is truly an issue that affects all Canadians, all people in Ottawa, because you don't have to be an injection drug user to be at risk of overdose."

'When they feel cared about, then they want to change'

Attendees said more of these deaths can be avoided by being more compassionate to people addicted to drugs.

Donna May’s daughter died of an opioid overdose two years ago.

"That's all my daughter asked for," she said of her daughter's desire for compassion.

"She wasn't given it by myself, the family, the community. And it cost her her life."

Jordon MacLean says he's overdosed on drugs but has been clean for more than six years. (CBC)

"If we want a safe community and a healthy community, we have to care about these people. Because when they feel cared about, then they want to change and we can all make a difference that way," MacLean said.

Another focus of the rally was to push for wider availability of the drug naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses.

Ottawa paramedics used the drug during 548 overdose calls in 2013, 33 per cent more than the year before. It’s also available with a prescription.

Another rally is planned on Parliament Hill for Sept. 30.

By Waubgeshig Rice
Source: CBC News