While some set up tents, others lay out harm reduction supplies on a foldable table.
Carefully coordinated, about a dozen volunteers set up a temporary, unsanctioned overdose prevention site (OPS) a few blocks from Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital on the morning of April 13, on the eve of the ninth anniversary of B.C.’s toxic drug public health emergency.
The initiative is led by Doctors for Safer Drug Policy (DSDP), an independent group of physicians from Vancouver Island. As they set up the pop-up site, their goal is to offer harm reduction services from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to hospital patients with substance use issues.
Addiction medicine physician and DSDP member Jill Wiwcharuk said the event highlights the need for hospital-based overdose prevention services, which she says are currently lacking in the Island’s healthcare institutions.
Noting that toxic drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 59 in B.C., Wiwcharuk argued that OPSs can help reduce those numbers.
“It's a very sad time we're living in when… we have federal leaders coming out saying things like, ‘I am against overdose prevention sites,’” she said. “That’s really concerning because there are mountains of research showing that overdose prevention sites save lives, decrease the risk of transmissible diseases, that they are a stepping stone for treatment for people and are parts of the treatment continuum."
With the province just hours away from marking the ninth anniversary of the public health emergency, Wiwcharuk argued that the need for these sites is as urgent as ever.
“This issue continues to be extremely relevant, although we have seen a very slight decline in toxic overdose deaths,” she said. “Sadly, politicians and public opinion are driving policies instead of high-quality evidence.”
Rather than being viewed through a political lens, Wiwcharuk said the issue should be addressed as a public health matter.
“How would [you] feel if your mother came into the emergency room with a heart attack and … the doctor told you, ‘I'm sorry, we can't give your mom a life-saving intervention because our politicians have told us we can't.’
“You move that to addiction medicine, and we know these interventions save lives, but we're being told by politicians that they can't happen," Wiwcharuk added. "That is a very scary and slippery slope. There's no other specialty of medicine where I see it as starkly as we do in addiction medicine and it's sad because many people view addictions as a moral failure instead of a crippling and deadly disease."
