Vancouver Island doctors set up overdose prevention sites

Doctors on Vancouver Island say they’re setting up unsanctioned overdose prevention sites on the grounds of Nanaimo General and Royal Jubilee hospitals this week because the B.C. government hasn’t lived up to its promise to set aside space for the sites. 

Dr. Jess Wilder, an addictions and family medicine practitioner in Nanaimo, says her work has been mired in “controversy and politicization” lately, and setting up overdose prevention sites is “about saving lives.” 

Wilder says the B.C. government pledged to open sites at every hospital in the province back in April, but those never materialized and she and other health care professionals have put up their own funds and time to run the “pop-up” sites throughout the week. 

She says the country is in the middle of the biggest public health crisis it has ever seen, and the B.C. government has had a ministerial order that dictates that “overdose prevention sites can and should, and must be set up in any place where they are needed.”

Wilder says seeing patients needlessly die has caused doctors much “moral distress,” while politicians have seized upon addictions services with harmful narratives and expert voices like hers have been sidelined. 

Wilder says a candidate in the last provincial election posted a TikTok video opposing a harm reduction vending machine at a hospital, and it was removed days later. 

“We have been fighting for interventions like that, for such a simple thing as a machine that can give somebody a condom or a clean needle, if they’re going to do the harmful thing anyway,” Wilder said. 

“We’ve been fighting for that for years and the fact that somebody who has no medical expertise can post a video on social media and have that be more impactful on the services that I’m able to provide my patients than anything that I’ve been doing for years is pretty devastating.” 

Dr. Ryan Herriot, who practices both family and addictions medicine in Victoria, said they’re setting up the sites on the day the new B.C. government is being sworn-in, and when welfare recipients get their cheques. 

Herriot said the day people get their cheques “is the most lethal day every month,” for drug users, and he said dissatisfaction among people in his field has been “percolating slowly.” 

“A decision was taken that, you know, we need to put our voices in the public sphere,” Herriot said. “I think what’s happened over the last couple of years is experts have been reticent to speak out, to kind of step out of their clinical role, and that has allowed non-experts to fill that void unfortunately.” 

He tells 1130 NewsRadio the initiative is designed to save lives.

“It’s also designed to connect folks to treatment and other services,” Herriot explained. “It is designed to allow patients who need to use substances to stay out of withdrawal, for example; to stay engaged in health care; to be able to stay admitted to hospital for when they require medically necessary life-saving treatment.”

Avoiding exposure to unregulated substances, Herriot says, is a “side benefit.” He says the service offers two well-ventilated tents: one for overdose prevention, and another with snacks, hand warmers, socks and gloves, and various harm-reduction supplies, pamphlets, and information.

Herriot says he hopes the incoming provincial health minister, Josie Osborne, shares the understanding held by Adrian Dix, the outgoing minister, that hospitals need designated spaces for safe use. But he hopes the new administration makes sustainable change.

“No one’s paying us to do this; we’re doing this out of our own pockets and our own time. And it shouldn’t be that way, but it is that way.”

The sites are being set up at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria and Nanaimo General Hospital, and Herriot, Wilder and others plan to run them all through this week.