Safe injection site set to open Monday
Health workers welcome addition with other shelters running at capacity
Edmonton’s third public safe-consumption site will open its doors Monday, and health officials are hoping it will help ease capacity issues at the existing two locations.
The new supervised site at Boyle McCauley Health Centre, 10628 96 St., will provide five booths and clean supplies in a consumption room for clients to use their drugs, team lead licensed practical nurse Kim Carter said during a media tour of the space Thursday.
Since the opening of the Boyle Street Community Services and George Spady Centre sites, 835 people have used the injection services through more than 19,000 visits.
“I think the other ones are working very hard to deal with the capacity that they’re seeing, so I think we’re all really excited to have extra capacity,” health centre executive director Cecilia Blasetti said.
The three locations centralized in the city’s core will now combine to provide service 24/7, after all were granted exemptions from Health Canada in 2017 for the use of illicit drugs. The sites have been designed to operate as similar as possible so users can go from site to site and expect the same service, Blasetti said.
Staffing shortages will be less of a concern for the new site, said Blasetti, because health care staff currently working in the centre have all been trained to work as one of the four staff members in the consumption space.
“We’ll have to hire backfill because we’ll have to replace the people that are working in here, but in those ways we feel it will be a bit of a smoother flow,” she said. “Our staff are experienced, they’re seasoned, they work with this population now and we see it
Our staff are experienced … we see it very much as a health service, so our health service professionals will be in here.
very much as a health service, so our health service professionals will be in here.”
Edmonton is still seeing a significant number of accidental drug-related deaths, a city committee heard Wednesday, with 35 fatal fentanyl overdoses between April and June. The supervised consumption sites have successfully reversed 228 overdoses that occurred on-site.
Concerns remain regarding used needles found in the surrounding communities, which Blasetti said has always been a priority for the centre and she doesn’t see it getting worse with the supervised service.
“I don’t think it’s going to solve all the problems, but I can’t believe that all of these people injecting outside who will now be injecting inside here will not make an impact on the number of needles being found in the community,” she said.
The Boyle McCauley space faced construction delays, which Blasetti attributes to having to relocate the dental clinic before renovations, while the other two locations had available space.
The hours of operation of the supervised consumption site will match the health centre hours and be open 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday.