Mobile drug use site needed in overdose crisis, officials say

Frontline workers and public health authorities are urging immediate action to reach London’s drug-using population that’s not touched by existing services – and pushing for provincial approval of a mobile supervised drug-use site – after five fatal suspected overdoses in the city in six days.

The five London fatalities between March 30 and April 4 bring the total of suspected overdose deaths in the region to at least nine in less than a week – a total that doesn’t take into account the number of overdoses police and paramedics throughout Southwestern Ontario have successfully reversed.

London police responded to at least three suspected overdoses over the weekend. All three people survived, police said.

On Saturday, St. Thomas police found a man without vital signs from a suspected fentanyl overdose. It took CPR and three doses of opioid antidote naloxone to revive him.

In Elgin-St. Thomas, paramedics have been seeing a significant increase in the number of overdose calls they’ve responded to in recent weeks, but it doesn’t paint the full picture of the drug crisis, said Allison Crossett, deputy chief of operations for Medavie EMS Elgin Ontario.

“Often we don’t make contact with the patients because they self-administer naloxone and then we don’t . . . get a call for service,” she said. “We’d like to come and support the patient, but we don’t always see them.”

London has mounted a co-ordinated community response to the opioid crisis and the city’s supervised drug-use site has saved lives, but existing services are falling short in reaching a vulnerable sector of the drug-using population, chief medical officer of health Chris Mackie said.

The group can include drug users who are socially isolated, distrustful of community resources and ones with infectious, drug-use related diseases who have other interactions with public health officials.

“It’s become very clear, with some of the situations we’ve seen, they’re not the ones that are likely to walk in through the door of a traditional service. . . . We need new models to get to the highest-risk people. We need to innovate,” Mackie said. “We’re doing a lot of outreach but we need to be going to places that we’re currently not reaching.”

The Middlesex-London Health Unit and its partner Regional HIV/AIDS Connection, which operates the city’s supervised drug-use facility, are awaiting a response from the province on their application to launch a mobile version of the site.

Related

The van would complement the existing facility at 186 King St., which is expected to transition to a permanent home at 446 York St. pending the results of an appeal to Ontario’s Local Planning Appeal Tribunal, formerly the Ontario Municipal Board.

“That would give us more flexibility within our community to reach folks that may not be able to make it down to the location,” said Brian Lester, executive director of Regional HIV/AIDS Connection. “That is a piece that I think we need to be also looking at getting an answer on as quickly as possible.”

The mobile supervised drug use site would set up for a few hours each day at pre-determined locations throughout the city, a “game-changer” in how the harm reduction service is delivered, said Regional HIV/AIDS Connection board president David Smith.

“We would be able to meet them where they’re at, in terms of location, but also where they’re at in life,” he said. “We can bring our services to them and support them in their own environment. It’s about decreasing barriers.”

jbieman@postmedia.com

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