Alberta's supervised consumption sites should be permitted to offer drug testing to help users learn what dangers might be lurking in their illicit narcotics, the province's opioid commission recommended Friday. While questions persist about the effectiveness of fentanyl-sensing strips and other testing devices, providing insight to users on what they plan to inject or ingest will undoubtedly save lives, commission leaders said. "Anytime you can give people a bit more understanding than absolutely none about what's in their drugs, I think that's a positive," Elaine Hyshka, co-chair of the Minister's Opioid Emergency Response Commission, told a news conference downtown. [continues 390 words]
Alberta's first supervised drug injection sites will open within months at four locations in Edmonton's inner city after receiving approval from Health Canada, the provincial government announced Wednesday. Proponents hailed the news as a "long overdue" step that will save lives and direct more addicts into treatment. The goal is to get three community sites open by late December or early January, while a fourth facility at the Royal Alexandra Hospital is anticipated to open sometime in the spring of 2018. [continues 1235 words]
Public health researchers behind Edmonton's effort to develop supervised drug consumption sites say they have a plan to study how the yet-to-be-approved facilities affect both clients and communities. Assuming the four sites win approval from Health Canada and begin operating, a robust evaluation process will be needed to gauge the benefits and residents' reactions to the facilities, the researchers said in a new report. The evaluation will be conducted by the University of Alberta's School of Public Health, with Elaine Hyshka serving as the lead. [continues 153 words]
New provincial statistics paint an increasingly grim picture of Alberta's fight against fentanyl, as the NDP government escalated its efforts Tuesday to get more naloxone antidote into the hands of first responders. Alberta Health's latest opioid report from 2016 suggests a deepening crisis is playing out across much of the province, where fentanyl was a factor in 343 overdose deaths last year - up one-third from 2015. The statistics show the final three months of 2016 were particularly harsh. The deaths of 111 people were related to fentanyl in that time frame, more than double the number from the same period in 2015. [continues 503 words]
The Alberta government says it will begin providing funding to several community agencies working to establish safe drug consumption sites. The money will be used to "explore the need" for the controversial facilities, which have been touted as an effective harm-reduction strategy for people who use illegal narcotics. Alberta health leaders have grown particularly concerned by a rise in the use of powerful opioid drugs, such as fentanyl, which has led to hundreds of deaths in the province. "It's critical that we are addressing the fentanyl and opioid crisis from a health perspective and harm reduction is a major part of that," associate health minister Brandy Payne said Thursday in Edmonton. [continues 397 words]
The idea of a supervised-injection site in Edmonton appears to have lukewarm support among city residents, a new poll has found. One of the researchers assembling a proposal for medically supervised injection services in the city said Sunday she hopes support will grow once people find out more about how the service would work. "We're helping people stay alive, and also helping them find an off-ramp from using injection drugs," said Elaine Hyshka, a University of Alberta public health researcher and core member of Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton. [continues 414 words]
Doctors In Training Hope To Gain Experience In Addictions Treatment Ozzy Osbourne has been a guest there. So have Elizabeth Taylor, Keith Urban and David Hasselhoff. Now eight University of Alberta medical students are heading to the Betty Ford Center in California to experience the same treatment given to rich and famous celebrities. Of course, the students aren't attending to get clean and sober, as Kelsey Grammer and Billy Joel did. Yet they'll go through the same therapy sessions, workshops and lectures for a first-hand look at addiction recovery from the patient's perspective. [continues 522 words]
Preliminary Study Of Vancouver's Experience Shows Benefits EDMONTON - Positive reviews of Vancouver's new safe injection centre have convinced some local leaders to consider the possibility of developing a similar facility in Edmonton. Mayor Stephen Mandel's task force on drugs, which includes representatives from the police, Capital Health and various community organizations, is set to discuss the controversial idea during its meeting next month. Such a facility, which allows drug users to shoot up with clean needles under the watchful eye of health workers, was set up in Vancouver's downtown eastside more than a year ago. It is the only official safe injection site in North America. [continues 379 words]
