In a presentation given at the International AIDS Conference in Montreal on Friday, Henry de Souza, the agency’s director general of clinical services and public health, said “a number of institutions” have been identified for expansion and the program will continue to be implemented across the country. Inmates have been able to request sterile drug use equipment in two Canadian prisons since 2018, and seven more were added in 2019. Some advocates have raised fears that the program, which is designed to reduce needle sharing and the spread of infectious diseases, could be canceled since numbers showed low uptake.
Read more: Mainline Needle Exchange opens doors to more accessible space in Halifax
Story continues below ad Only 53 inmates were actively using the programs in mid-June, officials told the AIDS conference Friday night, out of 277 who had been approved to participate in the past four years. These programs are in addition to the country’s only prison-based “overdose prevention service,” which began operating in 2019 at Drumheller Institution for Men in Alberta. It is essentially a supervised injection site, offering sterile equipment and monitored consumption. Since the site opened, there have been 55 participants, 1,591 visits and zero overdoses at the site, officials told the conference. The correctional service says it also offers mental health counseling, access to naloxone to treat the effects of opioid overdoses, and preventative treatments such as pre-exposure prophylaxis — a drug taken to prevent HIV infection. All these efforts have led to a reduction in infections, said Marie-Pierre Gendron, an epidemiologist at Correctional Service Canada. He said HIV infection among prisoners nationally has dropped from 2.02 percent of the prison population in 2007 to 0.93 percent in 2020. and hepatitis C is down from 21 percent in 2010 to 3, 2 percent in 2021. 2:11 Federal government grants BC an exemption to decriminalize hard drugs Federal government grants BC an exemption to decriminalize hard drugs – May 31, 2022 Lynne Leonard, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa who was commissioned by the agency to evaluate the programs, said during a panel Tuesday morning that both programs have had “significant beneficial effects” for inmates and has seen ” eventual successful institutional adoption’ despite initial staff pushback. Trending Stories
Is the pandemic over? What to expect from COVID-19 in the coming months The dark side of winning the lottery: the lucky ticket can cause new problems, say past winners
Story continues below ad Preliminary results from her study showed that the program appeared to lead to a significant reduction in HIV infections in institutions that implemented it. Overdoses in Drumheller are down more than 50 percent overall since the supervised consumption site opened. “I am encouraged by the way they describe the program as something they are proud of,” said Sandra Ka Hon Chu, co-executive director of the HIV Legal Network. But a major “red flag” that could lead to lower participation is the fact that security personnel are involved in the process, he said. This is not the case in other countries’ prison needle exchange programs, some of which are completely anonymous or even offer syringes in automated dispensers. “It’s really a critical flaw in the program,” he said.
Read more: Guards union says expansion of prison needle exchange on hold due to COVID-19
Asked about the low take-up, the prison service said in a statement on Tuesday that it had reviewed evaluation reports that indicated participation rates “may be a result of considerations such as stigma, fear, lack of understanding of harm reduction initiatives and the nature of addiction.” Inmates are subject to a security threat assessment and warden approval before they can access the programs, officials described the process. Nearly a quarter of requests to join the program have been rejected, according to statistics presented at the conference. Story continues below ad Shawn Huish, a warden at the Mission Institution in British Columbia, said it was a challenge to change the mindset of correctional workers who are used to searching for drugs, seizing them and trying to prevent inmates from taking them _ while reassuring prisoners participating in the program will not affect their release. There was a lot of “fake news” to fight, Huish said, including a billboard erected outside the prison that painted the program in a negative light. “Our biggest focus was to talk, to educate, to dispel fear. Recognizing a needle in prison can be scary for people,” he said. “You’re afraid of getting needles stuck in you. So we looked at the records. In two and a half years, we’ve had one staff member get stung, and that was during the search, and it was a hit.” 1:46 Prisons to provide clean needles for drug users in prison Prisons to provide clean needles for drug users in prison – May 17, 2018 Leah Cook, the regional director of public health for the Prairies, oversaw the implementation of the supervised injection site at Drumheller and said it is “the only known service of its kind in a correctional setting on the world stage, which I am incredibly proud of. “ Story continues below ad Cook said a “safe zone” was created so program participants could bring their own stash of drugs into the observation room without fear of being searched _ and is nicknamed the “yellow brick road.” Leonard’s research found that staff members at Drumheller preferred it to the needle exchange program and felt it was safer and more successful. The prison service’s statement says it is committed to the “further implementation” of both types of programs as part of its mission to “better support patients with problematic substance use needs.” The Warkworth Foundation and the Bowden Foundation have been identified for expanding their needle exchange program, the statement said, while the Collins Bay Foundation and the Springhill Foundation are being considered for expanding their overdose prevention service. © 2022 The Canadian Press