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Lack of funding and staff means no overdose prevention site for North Bay

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For the time being, there will be no overdose prevention site coming to North Bay.

The District of Nipissing Social Services Administration Board (DNSSAB) received grant funding to look at options for a facility.

“There’s been a lot of passionate pleas at our board meetings how that support could save lives and I think they’re valid,” said board chair Mark King.

A study was commission by DNSSAB and conducted by the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit. It concludes there is not enough funding and staff available to open such a facility and there is no lead agency to oversee operations.

Since many overdose prevention sites are implemented with a goal of applying to being a consumption and treatment facility, it wouldn’t fall under the health unit’s scope.

“The health unit‘s primary mandate is related to health promotion and prevention and less of a downstream of direct services which an overdose prevention site would be,” said Louise Gagné, the health unit’s executive director of community services.

An overdose prevention site can cost more than $800,000 to run each year. The spaces are for users to inject drugs while under trained staff supervision. Staff are on site to help if someone has an adverse reaction or overdose.

“Many overdose prevention sites are complimented by access to counselling, needle exchange, naloxone and other sorts of services,” said Gagné.

Health unit statistics show there were 19 opioid-related deaths in 2019 in the health unit’s area. That number more than doubled in both 2020 at 50 and 47 deaths in 2021.

This brings the rate of opioid related deaths to 65 per 100,000 people making the region the second highest of all medium-sized municipalities.

Whether a facility like this will ever come to the area, King said the city will just have to wait and see.

“My thought process now as the chair of DNSSAB now is that it’s a dead issue,” he said. 

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