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The two most populated cities in the Interior Health Authority (IHA) are getting closer to having safe injection sites of their own.
Dr. Silvina Mema, medical health officer with Interior Health, is leading the task group looking into safe consumption sites for Kelowna and Kamloops.
She said she’ll be meeting with Mayor Colin Basran of Kelowna and Mayor Peter Milobar of Kamloops within the next 30 days to discuss possible options.
IHA will also be meeting with officers from both RCMP detachments and community members as part of the process.
Mema said they have no current timeline for when they want to open the sites, although they hope to move the process along rather quickly.
"As soon as we can communicate with them and get their input, we are planning to move forward with this,” Mema said.
The drugs that would be used at the site are illegal and in order for a clinic to allow people to use them under their roof they need to get an exception to keep the drug user from being arrested.
Mema said it’s a lengthy process, but the federal government and provincial government are working hard to facilitate the exemption.
After all the meetings, IHA must fill out an application to show that they've engaged with municipalities, police services and community members before jumping to a safe consumption site.
If approved by Health Canada, they can move ahead.
The health authority has also been working with contracted agencies that are already providing harm reduction supplies like needle exchange and naloxone currently.
"Those agencies are also being brought into the conversation and might be able to support a service like this,” she explained.
Interior Health is hoping to incorporate a safe consumption or injection site as one more service to an already running harm reduction site in order to cut costs, rather than have a stand alone injection site.
Currently, Mema said they are still in conversations over who will fund the project, although the individual cities won't likely have to take on that cost. Because it is technically a health service, a safe injection site—or safe consumption site, as preferred by Interior Health—falls under their umbrella.
If opened, a safe injection site in Kamloops or Kelowna would be the first in the Interior Health Authority.
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