The First Harm Reduction Symposium in Saint John
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/03/24
With the continued increase in the number of deaths due to the opioid epidemic throughout Canada, there are increased calls for proactive and assertive, and evidence-based, measures to deal with it.
Those measures tend to be harm reduction methodologies. That means that the main means by which the experts and public can work together to reduce the overall harm of drugs in society while acknowledging these are simply part of the country.
Saint John hosted the first Harm Reduction Symposium to bring together doctors, former addicts, nurses, and social workers in order to converse on the opioid crisis in a group setting.
Public health nurse Penny Higdon said, “A multi-disciplinary approach, not one program or one department can solve some of these issues, we really have to work together.”
A pediatrician for Horizon Health, Sarah Gardner, said that there is a shift from an abstinence perspective and expectation of drug users or potential drug users to the idea that we can, instead, meet people where they are at and then provide harm reduction practices to them.
The Public Health Agency of Canada reports that 90 opioid-related deaths happened in Atlantic Canada. The total number for the country in 2016 was 2,861, which increase in 2017 and will continue to increase, or is extrapolated based on trend lines, in 2018.
Julie Dingwell of Avenue B Harm Reduction in Saint John has seen this growth from professional work. She said, “We’ve certainly seen more overdose deaths and our number of needles that we are providing has increased by almost 100,000 in a year and a half period.”
Harm reduction methodologies have been put in place in order to reduce the associated problems and public health concerns that come from opioid-related overdoses and potential deaths. These measures have included safe injection sites, Naloxone, and so on.
References
CTV Atlantic. (2018, March 24). Saint John conference discusses Canada’s growing opioid crisis. Retrieved from https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/saint-john-conference-discusses-canada-s growing-opioid-crisis-1.3857278.
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