Pubdate: Wed, 06 Aug 2014
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Robert Bostelaar
Page: A3
Cited: http://www.substanceabusepolicy.com/content/9/1/31

SAFE SITE BACKERS POINT TO SAVINGS

Advocates of government-sanctioned injection sites for drug users have a 
new argument for opening such facilities in Ottawa: a potential saving 
to taxpayers of at least $1 million a year.

The figure appears in a study published this week that compares the
estimated cost of operating two medically-supervised injection sites
with the health-care savings of averting nine HIV infections and 88
hepatitis C infections that drug users could otherwise get from
sharing dirty needles.

Lead researcher Ehsan Jozaghi of Simon Fraser University said in an
interview Tuesday that the findings present "strong arguments for
having these facilities in Ottawa to prevent HIV and hepatitis C
infections, which cost the health-care system millions of dollars a
year."

A coalition of supporters for Ottawa sites hopes the prospective
savings will catch the attention of those who so far have felt removed
from the contentious issue of safe injection sites. North America has
just one facility, a Vancouver storefront called Insite, and federal
and provincial politicians have rejected calls to open similar clinics
in other Canadian cities.

In Ottawa, Mayor Jim Watson and police Chief Charles Bordeleau oppose
the creation of a supervised injection site.

"If you don't feel like you are near the issue, I understand why the
dollars-and-cents (aspect) would be more valuable," said Catherine
Hacksel of the Campaign for Safer Consumption Sites in Ottawa.

"Even policy-makers, if they're not taking the time to talk to drug
users or to be really concerned about what's going in, maybe in some
shelters or in some lower income areas - if that's not really a
priority, if they want to at least have money to fix more of those
issues, this is the first thing that could make an impact on them."

Jozaghi said his peer-reviewed study, published in the online journal
Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention and Policy, was prompted by an
earlier University of Toronto study that suggested that two supervised
injection sites in Ottawa and three in Toronto would reduce the spread
of disease from shared needles. It said multiple sites would better
serve the more dispersed drug populations of the Ontario cities and
reduce any impact on neighbourhoods - a key issue in the urban areas
most likely to be home to the sites.

Using figures from that study and other published research, Jozaghi
determined that health-care savings of $5 million would outweigh the
$4-million cost of operating two Ottawa clinics. But he said the
actual saving would probably be much higher because the facilities,
based on the Vancouver experience, would also reduce other infection
rates, as well as overdose deaths. Neither was factored in because of
the difficulty in determining specific costs to health care and
society in general.

"If we had taken the prevention of overdose deaths into account, and
also the bacteria infections into account, obviously the
cost-effectiveness would have been far more (evident)," said the
researcher, a PhD candidate in criminology at the Vancouver university.

Hacksel believes volunteer labour could reduce the estimated cost of
the Ottawa sites, providing further savings.

Her coalition held a rally on the steps of Parliament Hill in March in
support of supervised sites. It's also working with the Sandy Hill
Community Health Centre, which with other agencies continues to work
on a proposal for an injection site in Ottawa.

The centre had planned last year to seek an exemption to drug laws
that would allow such a centre, as allowed by a 2011 Supreme Court
decision on Vancouver's Insite, but it delayed its application so it
could co-ordinate efforts with groups in other cities.
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MAP posted-by: Matt