Pubdate: Fri, 13 Jan 2017
Source: Kamloops This Week (CN BC)
Copyright: 2017 Kamloops This Week
Contact:  http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1271
Author: Dale Bass

'INCREDIBLE BENEFIT' TO OVERDOSE-PREVENTION SITES, ASK WELLNESS SAYS

There's been an "incredible benefit" to last month's creation of
overdose-prevention sites in Kamloops, said Bob Hughes, something that
goes beyond ensuring drug users are safe - many of them are talking with
the medical staff there about some of the reasons they are in their
lifestyles.

The executive director of ASK Wellness Centre said that as staff hand out
safe drug-use equipment - a program the agency has done for years to help
combat infections and other diseases associated with drug use - they're
also looking for opportunities to ask clients about housing needs other
health issues and whether they're ready to try rehabilitation programs or
other services that might see them make changes in the way they live.

"It's not just an exchange of the gear," Hughes said. "Having nurses there
also helps prevent anyone dying from an overdose but it also opens the
opportunity to talk to people instead of just saying, 'Here's your
equipment, now go.' I think that is one of the unintended but incredibly
beneficial outcomes.

"We want to help people to be safe but at the moment someone wants to go
into a treatment program, that should be a red-carpet ride for people who
want to go and get help."

Hughes praised the nursing staff who are working with the agency at the
sites for being "welcoming, skilled and compassionate.

"Along with our workers, it brings together harm-reduction and treatment
into a unified approach.

"Before, the treatment linkage had been absent," he said.

He also lauded Dr. Ian Mitchell, who has volunteered to be the medical
director for the two sites. Mitchell is an emergency-room physician at
Royal Inland Hospital and expert on medical cannabis and emergency
medicine.

Since the overdose-prevention sites were established at the ASK office on
Tranquille Road and the Crossroads Inn housing facility it operates on
Seymour Street, more than 150 naloxone kits have been handed out.

Only one overdose death was reported over the Christmas holiday period,
Hughes said, that of a recreational-drug user in his 20s who, despite
several injections of the drug that temporarily stops an overdose -
usually long enough for emergency personnel to arrive - the man was
declared brain-dead.

"It was such a tragedy," Hughes said. "He thought he was using cocaine."

The drug was likely laced with fentanyl, Hughes said, the opioid at the
heart of the provincial health crisis that has seen overdoses and related
death rates soaring.

Despite that, he said, research is showing the incidence of overdose
deaths in recreational drug users is starting to decrease.

"So they seem to be getting the message," Hughes said.
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