Overdose-prevention RV to hit Kelowna streets
Canada’s first mobile overdose-prevention sites will soon hit the road in the Okanagan. Interior Health has bought two customized $190,000 recreational vehicles to help abate B.C.’s disturbing number of illicit-drug overdoses, which killed 922 people last year.
The first RV will be deployed later this month in Kelowna, where a fixed site is closing because its lease is up. A second in Kamloops will be deployed within the next three months.
Dr. Trevor Corneil, Interior Health’s chief medical health officer, said the region’s needs are unique because of its vast geography — 54 communities, cities and towns — and the widespread dispersal of overdoses.
Having a mobile service allows health care providers to travel to neighbourhood “hot spots” as overdoses spike due to fentanyl, carfentanil and other drugs.
“This, for us, is an opportunity to try something new in Canada,” Corneil said.
Interior Health is still finalizing how the sites will work, but the concept has them staffed by a nurse and a social worker or counsellor with security nearby, Corneil said. A drug user would visit the parked RV to access harm-reduction supplies and find opportunities for treatment, counselling and a “safer” space to use.
The RVs will be stocked with the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. A client support and assessment area in the rear of the RV would serve as a “chill room,” he added.
Interior Health is still waiting on federal approval to operate the RVs as supervised-consumption sites, but Corneil said that because of B.C.’s current public-health emergency, drug users may be allowed to use drugs inside, based on community needs and approval.
“I think (the RVs) will at least meet the initial needs and allow for the exploration of sensitizing users, sensitizing the public to what are quite cutting-edge approaches to dealing with this high-risk community,” Corneil said.
“Those opportunities, those therapeutic interventions, those moments, are what can make the difference.”
According to B.C. Coroners Service data, 33 people died in the Interior Health region in the first two months of 2017, compared to 82 in Vancouver Coastal Health region. But in 2016, death rates in both regions were comparable, at more than 21 people per 100,000 population.
Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran said the city supports Interior Health’s decision on a mobile service, particularly for its ability to travel to areas where overdoses are spiking.
“We knew we had to do something,” he said.
Basran believes Interior Health will be able to modify a mobile service in reaction to the needs of the whole community, which has shared stories with him of loved ones lost to the provincewide crisis.