Winnipeg hospital unveils vending machine to help with harm reduction

Winnipeg's St. Boniface Hospital is the first acute-care hospital in Canada to have a vending machine to help save lives.

Our Healthbox enables people who need harm reduction and health supplies to get them discreetly — and free — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The machine, unveiled Wednesday morning, supplies naloxone and HIV self-testing kits, safe consumption supplies like clean needles, sexual health supplies, as well as menstrual and hygiene products, among other things.

"In my view, it's extremely important. In the last several years, we have seen more and more persons coming into St. Boniface Hospital with substance use," said Katarina Lee-Ameduri, a clinical ethicist at St. Boniface Hospital and the director of ethics for the Réseau Compassion Network.

There has also been an increase in people seeking supplies, like naloxone, to help combat the consequences of substance use, she said, but the machine is there for other reasons, too.

"There's also, unfortunately, the realities of persons living within our community who have other unmet needs. They need socks, they need underwear, they need hygiene kits," Lee-Ameduri told CBC Manitoba Information Radio host Marcy Markusa.

"So those basic dignity human supplies will now be available for free for individuals in the community and also patients that we have."

The machine is temporarily located in the basement area, across from the Robin's Donuts, at the hospital's south entrance. It will be moved in mid-September to be outside the new emergency entrance after construction is completed.

There are similar types of vending machines that use handprint technology to deliver harm reduction supplies, but the St. Boniface box is the second through the Our Healthbox initiative.

The NorWest Co-op Community Health clinic in Winnipeg introduced Manitoba's first Our Healthbox in March 2024.

St. Boniface's box is the 12th in Canada. The first four were launched in January 2023 in New Brunswick.

Developed by Dr. Sean B. Rourke at St. Michael's Hospital (Unity Health Toronto), the machines have been visited more than 118,000 times by close to 10,000 people, and have distributed more than 48,000 supplies, including over 2,100 naloxone kits, said Reach Nexus, a national research group where Rourke is the director.

"This is something that works. It's going to help the community here," Rourke said at Wednesday's launch. "It's going to reach people, it's going to help people get what they need to take care of themselves and their health.

"It's the first hospital in Canada, so we're very excited about that. I hope other hospitals follow."

The machines feature an interactive video screen that shows the products. When people tap the one they want, the screen also provides relevant information.

"It allows the person who's coming up to the machine to learn about the supplies and what's in each package, and then additionally, have the education needed to be able to utilize the supplies," Lee-Ameduri said.

"For example, if it's a naloxone kit, it will tell you about overdose [and] it will tell you how to utilize [the] kit."

The machine can also be programmed to display information about current public health concerns in the community, such as a warning about tainted drugs.

"The interface of it, it's effectively like a large computer," Lee-Ameduri said. "There's almost like an index where people can try to seek other supports [in the city] that they are looking for. So it's meant not just as the dissemination of these supplies … but information sharing, too."

It's in St. Boniface, Winnipeg's French quarter, and there is a French language option.

It's aimed at people 16 years of age and older, but there are limitations to preventing those younger than that from accessing the supplies, Lee-Ameduri said.

A person is given a series of questions and asked to input their year of birth in order to create a user ID for future use.

"We are making the assumptions that when people are trying to go in and remember what type of unique user ID they have, that they're going to have a fairly accurate year of birth. There is definitely good faith involved here," Lee-Ameduri said.

Data collected from the machine will help determine the number of new and returning users, and which supplies are being used the most.

Funding for the St. Boniface machine came from BMO, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research and Reach Nexus, as well as from private sources, while some supplies, like the needles and sterile water for injection kits, are from public health.

"Part of the initiatives going forward will be seeing how many supplies we're going through and at what frequency, and at that point, looking to what other resources we potentially have to be able to to upkeep those supplies," Lee-Ameduri said.