Vancouver Coastal Health opens first overdose prevention site outside Vancouver

POWELL RIVER (NEWS 1130) – For the first time, Vancouver Coastal Health has opened an overdose prevention site outside of Vancouver.

After a year of planning, the services are now available in a Britco movable trailer in Powell River.

The city, which has a population of 13,000, has the highest per capita opioid overdose death rate in the health region, after Vancouver.

Stuart Clark is executive director of a Powell River non-profit called Prep Community Programs, the lead group for the Powell River Community Action Team which has been working for a year to get the site up and running.

“Our operation is set up on a very temporary basis right now. We only have funding until March. It’s a trial period right now. The building right now is a temporary structure and can be moved.”

Like other overdose prevention sites, it is equipped with booths, brand new needles, naloxone and oxygen.

He says initially there was a lot of concern over where to locate the trailer. They used data from the BC Ambulance Service and the coroner to pinpoint where a lot of the overdoses were happening.

“Our service is located near schools and businesses. And so we’ve had to do a lot of communication around why that location was chosen and to make sure we are good neighbours,” he says.

“Definitely there has been some pushback. A lot of it comes in the form of questions and uncertainty about whether it should be in this neighbourhood or that neighbourhood. But at the end of the day, we were able to get through to people and over people have been pretty supportive.”

The new pilot site was supposed to open last month, but an authority spokeswoman says a break-in at the site delayed the launch while they installed fortified locks and a security system.

The authority says there were 39 overdose deaths last year for the North Shore-Coast Garibaldi area that includes Powell River and there were 76 emergency calls for overdoses during the same period in the city.

Shannon Ollson, with the Powell River Community Action Team, says the site is badly needed because there are overdoses in the laundromat, at the park and in the washrooms of convenience stores.

Vancouver Coastal is providing clinical support and supplies, while the Powell River Community Action Team will manage the site and the City of Powell River is leasing the property for free for one year.

Kathryn Colby, the co-ordinator for the action team, says stigma and shame cause people to use alone, putting them at extreme risk of fentanyl poisoning and overdose.

“Middle-aged men, many with young families, are incredibly vulnerable to accidental overdose death, leaving a social toll on the community which we have yet to fully realize. This overdose prevention site pilot is a community-created project, designed to address these preventable tragedies.”

More than 1,500 people died from an illicit drug overdose last year in B.C. and 1,208 of them were male.

Vancouver has six overdose prevention sites.

With files from the Canadian Press