16th International AIDS Conference Toronto, Canada - August 13 - 18, 2006

THE RESULTS FROM THE THREE-YEAR EVALUATION OF VANCOUVER’S SUPERVISED INJECTION FACILITY

Int Conf AIDS. 2006 Aug 13-18;16 Abstract No. TuAc0303

Kerr T., Tyndall M., Small W., Lai C., Li K., Montaner J., Wood E.
BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Vancouver, Canada

BACKGROUND: In September 2003, North America’s first medically supervised safer injection facility (SIF) opened in Vancouver, Canada. Within the SIF, injection drug users can inject pre-obtained illicit drugs under medical supervision. Our objective is to report on the key evaluation results from the three-year scientific evaluation of Vancouver’s SIF.

METHODS: The evaluation methodology involves a comprehensive database located at the SIF, a randomly selected prospective cohort of 1046 SIF users, a pre-existing external community-recruited control cohort of injection drug users, and extensive data linkages.

RESULTS: The results of the evaluation indicate that the SIF has attracted a high-risk population of injection drug users, and use of the SIF has been associated with statistically significant reductions in public disorder (p < 0.001) and high-risk syringe sharing (p = 0.01) and increased uptake of detoxification services (p < 0.001). During an 18-month period, the SIF staff successfully managed 336 overdoses, and none of the overdoses resulted in a fatality. The results also indicate that the establishment of the SIF has not adversely affected community drug use patterns, including prompting relapse and initiation into injection drug use.

CONCLUSIONS: The Vancouver SIF has been well accepted by the target population, and positive impacts have been observed, including reductions in HIV risk behaviour and increased uptake of addiction programs. Overall findings suggest that the SIF has been a successful public health intervention for reducing HIV risk and other harms of injection drug use.

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2006-08-13
TuAc0303

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