Overdose prevention pop-up in Winnipeg shows need for permanent sites across Manitoba: advocate

A pop-up overdose prevention site in Winnipeg over the long weekend suggests there's a need for permanent, supervised consumption sites and other services, the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network says.

Nurses, outreach workers and peer volunteers with experience in drug use worked together Sept. 4-6 between noon and 8 p.m. to create a space where people could consume drugs in a supervised setting, the network said in a news release Wednesday.

During that time, 260 community members were also able to pick up harm reduction and overdose prevention supplies like Naloxone, syringes and condoms, and receive nurse care, testing for sexually transmitted infections and blood-borne illnesses.

Naloxone is an opioid overdose antidote that temporarily reverses slowed breathing.

Jonny Mexico, the Winnipeg network coordinator for the provincial harm reduction network, says volunteers gave out Naloxone kits to 131 people and roughly 80 per cent said they had used the antidote before.

"This demonstrates that overdose prevention interventions are very needed," they said in the release.

The harm reduction network says the pop-up, which was volunteer-run and unfunded, was a response to alarming rates of overdose and an attempt to avoid preventable deaths. It says Manitoba can expect to see over 400 overdose deaths this year.

Organizers want this pop-up — the second one the network has put on to date — to springboard the development of permanent, funded, legal, supervised consumption sites and other overdose prevention measures like supervised drug supply sites in Manitoba.

The Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs describes "safe supply" as "a legal and regulated supply of drugs with mind/body altering properties that traditionally have been accessible only through the illicit drug market." 

Manitoba harm reduction advocates are calling for a supervised supply of drugs to be made available to people so that they can be certain the substances have not been adulterated with stronger additives like fentanyl.

This comes on the heels of a number of deaths and overdoses linked to green bean pills, which resemble oxycodone tablets and may contain fentanyl.

Between January and December 2020, 372 people lost their lives to overdoses in the province, which exceeds all of 2019 by 87 per cent, according to preliminary data from Manitoba's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

The overdose prevention site follows the recommendations presented by a 2018 report by VIRGO Planning and Evaluation Consultants, which called for the expansion of harm reduction services.