Pubdate: Mon, 18 Apr 2011
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2011 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Julio Montaner
Note: Julio Montaner is director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in 
HIV/AIDS and past president of the International AIDS Society.
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/Insite

DYING FOR A CHANGE ON SAFE-INJECTION SITE

A health-care facility that saves lives and prevents the transmission 
of deadly diseases should be hailed as an innovative advancement in 
medical care - not a political football to be punted around by the 
government of the day.

Unfortunately, however, the federal Conservatives continue to play 
deadly games with Insite, North America's first supervised injection 
site. Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservatives have 
consistently ignored scientific evidence showing that Insite reduces 
behaviour that causes HIV and other infections, increases uptake into 
detox, and decreases public disorder.

And now a landmark study undertaken by the B.C. Centre for Excellence 
in HIV/AIDS and published by the international medical journal The 
Lancet shows that Insite also dramatically reduces overdose deaths.

The evidence is absolutely clear: Insite provides essential, 
life-saving benefits to people who desperately need them and improves 
community health and safety in Vancouver's poorest urban 
neighbourhood. The only roadblock standing in the way of offering 
similar benefits in other Canadian cities and to people in need 
throughout the country is the federal Conservative Party.

Mr. Harper and his team of moralistic crusaders have done everything 
in their power to shut down Insite, including challenging court 
decisions that favour the continued operation of the facility and 
commissioning biased and misleading pseudo-research to discredit the program.

As the Conservatives' court challenges slowly wind their way through 
the legal system, the resultant uncertainty has two debilitating 
results: It ensures that Insite remains unable to grow and meet the 
demand for its services, and it prevents other Canadian jurisdictions 
from establishing desperately needed supervised injection sites of their own.

The Conservatives' rejection of these sites is costing lives. Insite 
is a pilot facility with only 12 injection seats that operates at 
full capacity. Health-care providers at the facility supervise more 
than 500 injections a day. Significantly, not a single overdose death 
has been recorded at Insite - though thousands of overdoses have 
occurred at the facility since it opened in 2003.

Outside the facility is a more sobering story: The neighbourhood 
surrounding Insite has an estimated 5,000 injection drug users. 
Obviously, many of the people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside who 
want to use the facility can't. Deadly diseases continue to spread, 
and overdose deaths continue to accumulate.

Supervised injection sites are not a panacea for all the issues 
associated with injection drug use. They should be considered a 
critical piece of a comprehensive strategy to deal with addiction and 
its related ills. These should include services such as needle 
exchange, decriminalization of illicit drug users, medicalization of 
illicit drugs, low threshold detox, supportive housing and retraining 
initiatives tailored to the needs of people who use drugs.

Rather than challenging the legitimacy of a life-saving health-care 
facility that prevents the transmission of deadly diseases, we should 
be implementing supervised injection sites across the country. For 
many Canadians, having such a facility nearby and its services 
readily available is a matter of life and death.

Canadians must tell the federal Conservatives to support 
evidence-based health and drug policies and to drop their court 
challenge to Insite. People shouldn't have to pay with their lives 
for misguided policies based on the moral convictions of a comparative few.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom