Nurses on board with injection sites
Re City to open supervised injection sites, March 12 Record numbers of our colleagues, friends and loved ones are succumbing to drug abuse. And without effective harm-reduction strategies, we are condemning them to die alone in the dark.
But a light came on in Toronto when Dr. David McKeown, the city’s medical officer of health, announced that supervised injection services (SIS) will be offered under nurses’ supervision at three Toronto locations. Evidence shows that SIS reduce overdose deaths, limit the spread of infectious diseases and help build safer communities. Bold public health initiatives like this are needed if we are going to reduce the tragic number of overdose deaths in this city. But what about the rest of the country?
RNs were a driving force behind the Insite SIS in Vancouver, and we fought to keep the site open when then prime minister Stephen Harper tried to shut it down. If we are going to make SIS more available and save countless lives across Canada, we need political help. And now we have it. Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott has already called her visit to Insite “extremely moving.”
Now we need our new federal government to move and make life-saving SIS a priority. Nurses are ready for it. The time is now. Dr. Doris Grinspun, CEO, the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario It is absolutely critical that Toronto, like Vancouver and Montreal, gets on board and supports supervised injection sites. It is, indeed, the right thing to do.
We simply cannot ignore the scientific evidence. The issue at hand is public health, not politics. And the evidence speaks for itself.
In September 2014, Canada’s first sanctioned supervised injection site, Insite, celebrated over 10 years of servicing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside: 10 years, two million visitors, and no deaths. Insite runs steadily every day for 18 hours until 4 a.m. Approximately 800 people use the booths each day.
It is time that policies affecting the health and safety of citizens conform to science. It is called depoliticizing health leadership and science over politics. Emile Therien, Ottawa