Mobile supervised consumption sites were introduced in Kelowna and Kamloops in 2017 to help tackle the opioid crisis.
For drug user Curtis Biggs, the retrofitted RV is now a safe haven where he can inject drugs under the watchful eye of a health-care professional.
”They don’t judge you or anything. It’s really good,” he said. “You feel safe.”
Kelowna’s RV travels around to set locations and times in the Rutland neighbourhood and downtown.
“When they first pull in, there’s a big crew waiting to get in, but they handle the payload,” Biggs said.
Interior Health social worker Andrew Kerr worked at the site when it first opened.
“It took time to build trust with the community,” he said.
The site has seen more than 40,000 visits since opening in April 2017, Kerr said.
“We really try to make feel people feel welcome. We try to strip down the barriers,” he said.
“It’s amazing, building the relationship in such a vulnerable way where people are injecting their drugs in front of a health-care professional,” Kerr said.
“They know they’re going to be able to access sterile harm-reduction supplies. We can test their drugs to see if there’s fentanyl inside the drugs, and if there’s an overdose, we can respond to the overdose,” he added.
A new study in the Harm Reduction Journal found that the sites are largely successful but still face challenges.
According to the study, workers find the RV small and say it can be tough to respond to overdoses or deal with aggressive patients in a tiny space.
Workers also noted that it’s difficult to have private conversations with clients who need help.
The study also found the hours of operation meet the needs of less than half of clients.
“Practically speaking, I think we have demonstrated that there is a need and that there is a role at some point in either Kamloops or Kelowna for a fixed site,” Dr. Trevor Corneil, Interior Health’s chief medical health officer, said.
Statistics show that between the beginning of August and the end of November in 2017, there were 6,105 visits to Kelowna’s mobile site. Kamloops had 1,865 visits, which is less than a third as many as Kelowna.
“We did find that the usage in Kelowna was much higher. However, the services that were provided in the Kelowna mobile were more focused on harm-reduction supplies than actual supervised consumption services,” Corneil said.
Health officials are hoping for a permanent location in the future.
“A mobile site may be best suited to temporarily provide services while bridging towards a permanent location,” the study reads.
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