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After around two and a half months, Regina’s only safe consumption site is hoping to reopen its doors, which comes while the Queen City is dealing with an overdose alert.
The Newo-Yotina Friendship Centre, including its safe consumption site, has been closed since the end of March following a fire in a neighbouring building.
The fire department said the blaze was under control at 7:13 p.m. Nobody was hurt. (Regina Fire/X)
Emile Gariepy, harm reduction manager and primary care paramedic at the centre, said Regina is dealing with a “toxic” batch of fentanyl, following four suspected overdoses in just a week.
“I haven’t been able to test any of the drugs with the safe injection site being closed,” Gariepy said. “We can’t really help out as much in the community.”
Read more:
- Overdose alert issued after Regina sees four suspected overdose deaths in a week
- Saskatoon sees 30 overdoses in three days, prompting health ministry warning
- ‘Cannot be naive’: Regina monitoring Saskatoon overdose crisis, mayor says
He said it’s been difficult having the site closed and said the four lives lost could have been prevented.
“Any overdoses that were around that neighbourhood, or people who’ve come into the safe injection site around our business hours, they would have been saved in the building,” he said.
He’s doing what he can by handing out naloxone (Narcan) to people in the community.
“I’m still distributing naloxone just out of my car right now,” Garipey said. “And the boxes are going really, really fast.”
He said the site’s only drug spectrometer was also damaged by the smoke and had to be sent away to get fixed.
Gariepy is unsure how long it will take to make sure the device is able to be used again.
When the safe consumption site reopens, either next week, or the following week at the latest, Gariepy said some upgrades have been made.
“We’re gonna have more tables. So there’ll be five to seven tables now instead of three,” he said.
Gariepy would like to see more investments in harm reduction, especially ones that are more accessible in the North Central community.
“Investing some money in a bigger and more structured safe injection site would be pretty good too,” he said.
Overdose alert in Regina
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Health has issued an overdose alert after Regina saw four suspected overdose deaths in a single week.
According to the ministry, many of the 54 suspected overdoses police reported in the Queen City between June 5 and Thursday required multiple doses of naloxone to revive the patients. Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, is suspected to be behind the rash of overdoses.
Gariepy said using multiple doses of naloxone is common.
“I’d say it usually takes two little ampoules of the 0.4 milligram (to revive a patient),” he said. “But I’ve had to do as many as two cases, so six or seven of them.”
While no description of the drugs was available, but the health ministry noted that using illegally acquired drugs poses a risk of overdose and death.
On Friday, the health ministry did issue an alert for a drug recently tested at Saskatoon’s Prairire harm Reduction that is being sold as fentanyl.
The ministry said it looks like a red/orange powder and contains 10 to 25 per cent fentanyl, benzodiazepines, and xylazine.
The ministry added that while naloxone will temporarily address the effects of the fentanyl and is recommended, it will not reverse sedation related to xylazine or benzodiazepines.
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