Pubdate: Wed, 03 Mar 2004
Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Vancouver Courier
Contact:  http://www.vancourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474
Author: David Carrigg
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)

SOUTH VAN NEEDS 24/7 HEALTH CENTRE TO FIGHT DRUG PROBLEM

An emerging health crisis in South Vancouver needs immediate attention, 
says the South Vancouver Community Health Society.

Bert Massiah, spokesman for the society, said a combination of soaring drug 
abuse and South Vancouver's demographics is a recipe for disaster.

The area has more single parents, children and youth, youths not in school, 
married couples with three or more children and non-English-speaking 
residents than any other part of Vancouver.

Massiah said his group has been lobbying the Vancouver Coastal Health 
Authority for the past three years to establish a 24-hour health contact 
centre in South Vancouver.

Currently, South Vancouver only has a health office, which is open from 9 
a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week.

Massiah said the South Vancouver Community Health Society wants the city 
and health authority to create a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week health centre in 
the new Sunset Community Centre, where needles and condoms would be dispensed.

"South Vancouver is such a traditional community and there is a lot of 
opposition. The concern is drugs and all these horrible people," he said. 
"That's why I remind people any chance I get that less than 10 per cent of 
the young people in the Downtown Eastside were born there. The rest came 
from places like South Vancouver."

Massiah said South Vancouver community groups began to notice an increase 
in open drug use and prostitution in their neighbourhood about three years ago.

"What triggered it is they found some needles on the grounds of the 
Salvation Army care home in 2001. The executive director at the time was a 
member of the health board's advisory committee and he came to us and said 
'Look what I've found'," Massiah said. "We talked to some of the business 
people on Fraser and they said they were seeing more needles in the back 
alleys. We did more asking around and began seeing there were real problems 
emerging."

In response, the South Vancouver Community Health Society contacted Art 
Steinmann, a consultant and former head of the provincial government's 
Alcohol and Drug Education Service, to help develop a pilot project to deal 
with drug abuse.

Last month, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority agreed to fund the first 
phase of the project, which will cost $20,000 and involves creating an 
advisory committee, conducting research in the community and determining 
the feasibility of a second phase. If phase two is approved by the health 
authority, at a cost of $46,000, a key goal of the nine-month project will 
be to provide drug abuse prevention information to grandparents of 
immigrant families.

Massiah said grandparents are often left to raise children in immigrant 
families where both parents work. As those children move from elementary to 
high school, they face pressure to use alcohol and drugs. "The parents are 
often working hard to establish themselves in the country and a lot of kids 
are raised by grandparents and often English is a second language in the 
home. We have to reach out to those adults."
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