Health officials say location of new supervised injection sites won’t be released before they are approved
Five new supervised injection sites could be opening somewhere in the Vancouver area, but health officials will not release the locations until they are approved by Health Canada.
Health Minister Terry Lake says the province wants to open the new sites – similar to the Insite facility in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – to stop the soaring number of overdose deaths.
But according to Vancouver Coastal Health spokeswoman Anna-Marie D’Angelo none of the new sites would be stand-alone sites like Insite.
Instead, all would be located inside existing facilities that already provide services for drug users.
There are already two supervised injection sites operated by Vancouver Coastal Health. One is Insite. The other is a smaller location at the Dr. Peters Centre at St. Paul’s Hospital. That one is only open to clients of the centre, which serves people with HIV/AIDS.
Both have Health Canada permits, which are required in order to legally allow doctors and nurses to monitor users at a supervised drug site, she said.