With the number of opioid-related deaths in Timmins continuing to increase, a group is working toward a supervised safe consumption site.
Dr. Louisa Marion-Bellemare and Dr. Julie Samson returned to Timmins council this week to talk about the opioid crisis in the region and what's being done to address it. The doctors were joined by Porcupine Health Unit medical officer of health Dr. Lianne Catton and Timmins and District Hospital president and CEO Kate Fyfe.
There are ongoing projects being worked on in tandem.
An Urgent Public Health Needs Site (UPHNS) is the short-term solution, with the ultimate goal of establishing a supervised consumption site.
The UPHNS is a temporary solution to bridge the gap as the group works toward a supervised consumption site, which could take two to three years to work through the approvals for.
While the permanent site would come with a funding stream, the UPHNS does not.
They did not say what the cost is for the temporary site. Fyfe said there are ongoing discussions with the province and other partners to pool funding and resources for it.
One of the key areas for both solutions is having an operator.
“The hospital is prepared to step into the role of operator, really looking at getting the site up and running as quickly as possible. We also heard that this site really is a demonstrated health need and we feel that as the hospital that is an extension of our existing supports and services we can be positioned to be able to fully operational in a very short time period,” she said.
The goal, said Fyfe, is to have a UPHNS in operation by early winter.
She said a working group is doing an environmental scan on possible locations. The site of the UPHNS will not necessary be where the longterm solution is developed.
Supervised consumption sites are staffed 24 hours and are a safe place for people to use their drugs, said Marion-Bellemare.
"But it’s not just somewhere where they can use their drugs, it’s somewhere where people can obtain medical care and they can obtain wraparound services including social services, help with housing, finances and entry into different types of programs and treatment programs,” she said.
It's been nearly a year since Marion-Bellemare and Samson first talked to Timmins council about the opioid crisis locally.
At that time, they talked about the staggeringly high rate of overdose deaths in the city — which have since increased even more — and their vision to address it.
The immediate short-term solutions they suggested in 2020 were medically-supported acute withdrawal community treatment in the city, access to medically supervised safe beds, and an overdose prevention site.
“Although we’ve made some strategic changes that includes improving communication between partners, community partners, and we’ve also opened two very valuable detox beds where we’ve served over 100 people — who they themselves would tell you they would probably be one of our statistics. And that’s just through our detox beds and these are people who we continue to follow today, we continue to treat. The issue becomes people are still dying and we see this right now we’re at a rate of one per week and we’re at the point where we have to say OK, we’re missing something. And what we’re missing is a juncture between harm reduction and treatment,” Marion-Bellemare said.
The number of deaths in the region were broken down by Catton.
“Unfortunately, the Porcupine Health Unit … we had the dubious and unfortunately tragic distinction of having the second-highest opioid-related deaths in the province for 2020,” she said.
In 2020, 40 people died of opioid-related overdoses in the Porcupine Health Unit region. In 2019, there were 22.
Of the overall deaths, 31 (86 per cent) were in Timmins.
“The rate of deaths in the Timmins area increased more than three-fold between 2018 and 2020. From 23.9 to 74 per 100,000. Unfortunately, it’s not getting any better. I really wish it was, but our rates for 2021 so far for the first quarter, from January to March alone are even higher than we saw in the first quarter in 2020 and the pattern has continued and we’re extremely, extremely worried,” Catton said.
The impact of a supervised consumption site, said Marion-Bellemare, is that it saves lives.
She said the sites decrease patient death rates by about 35 per cent. About 23 per cent (or one in four people) will stop injecting drugs withing six months to a year of using a site and 75 per cent will change their drug behaviour. She explained this could mean going from injecting to inhaling drugs or taking them orally.
“When you look at a harm reduction approach, these are the things we’re looking for. We know that injecting drugs brings along higher risk of mortality and morbidity,” she said.
Samson noted the sites also reduce the number of people using in public spaces and reduces the improper disposal of needles, along with other safety benefits.
The group has a number of asks for the city moving forward.
They're looking for formal support for a supervised consumption site from the City of Timmins through a letter of support, public endorsement and passing a resolution.
They've also asked the city to consider providing money for the urgent temporary site, and for continued leadership support and a dedicated municipally funded lead position for the implementation process and next steps.
Timmins Mayor George Pirie said he 100 per cent endorses the presentation.
“Addictions and mental health is a Gordian knot and for years we’ve been trying to untangle this knot and we have to slice it through. We have to change how we approach what we’ve been doing because what we’ve been doing hasn’t been successful,” he said.
Pirie's sure that the city can find a way to make the sites happen.
“A year ago we had a divided community and now we have a united community. The silos have been broken, everybody’s working together to make sure this happens,” he said.
