Doctors met by security as they set up unsanctioned overdose prevention sites at Vancouver Island hospitals

An attempt by doctors to set up overdose prevention sites on hospital property in Nanaimo and Victoria was shut down Monday by the Island health authority, forcing the volunteers to move their operations across the street. 

Doctors and other volunteers tried to set up sites on the grounds of Nanaimo General and Royal Jubilee hospitals over frustration that the B.C. government hasn’t lived up to its promise to set aside space for overdose prevention at the health-care facilities. 

Dr. Jess Wilder, an addictions and family medicine practitioner in Nanaimo, said her work has been mired in “controversy and politicization” lately, and setting up overdose prevention sites is “about saving lives.” 

Wilder said the B.C. government pledged to open sites at every hospital in the province in April, but they never materialized.

She said she and other health-care professionals are donating their own funds and time to set up and run the “pop-up” sites at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria throughout the week, starting Monday — the day the new B.C. cabinet was sworn in. 

She said volunteers in Nanaimo were met by police and hospital security, who told organizers they weren’t allowed on hospital grounds and could be physically removed and arrested for trespassing. 

Wilder said volunteers then established the overdose prevention site across the street from the hospital. 

Dr. Réka Gustafson, Island Health’s chief medical health officer, said in a statement Monday that the health authority “is focused on enhancing care and connecting people to health services wherever they are in their journey, particularly in the face of the enduring toxic drug crisis.”

“Ensuring the safety of our staff, medical staff, patients, volunteers and visitors is of paramount importance. Operating an unapproved clinical service or demonstration on Island Health property cannot be supported, the statement said. “That is why our protection services teams worked respectfully with organizers to ensure their planned activities did not occur on Island Health property.”

Wilder said the country is in the middle of the biggest public health crisis it has ever seen, and the B.C. government has had a ministerial order that dictates that “overdose prevention sites can and should and must be set up in any place where they are needed.”

Wilder said seeing patients needlessly die has caused doctors much “moral distress,” while expert voices like hers have been sidelined when politicians seize upon addiction services with harmful narratives. 

She pointed to how a candidate in the recent provincial election posted a TikTok video opposing a harm-reduction vending machine at a hospital, and it was removed days later. 

Premier David Eby ordered a review of the vending machine program in late August after the B.C. Conservative candidate for the Nanaimo-Lantzville riding, Gwen O’Mahony, posted a video to social media highlighting her concerns about the vending machines.

The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions told CBC News, prior to its dissolution in Monday’s new cabinet announcement, that while its review is underway, health authorities were suspending “harm reduction measures that do not offer an opportunity for an in-person connection with a peer or health- care worker who can provide a connection to the system of care.”  

The provincial government said Monday mental health and addictions-related matters will now fall under the Ministry of Health.

“We have been fighting for interventions like that, for such a simple thing as a machine that can give somebody a condom or a clean needle if they’re going to do the harmful thing anyway,” Wilder said. 

“We’ve been fighting for that for years, and the fact that somebody who has no medical expertise can post a video on social media and have that be more impactful on the services that I’m able to provide my patients than anything that I’ve been doing for years is pretty devastating.” 

Dr. Ryan Herriot, who has a family and addictions medicine practice in Victoria, said they’re setting up the sites on the day when welfare recipients get their cheques — which he described as “the most lethal day every month” for drug users. 

He said dissatisfaction among people in his field has been “percolating slowly.” 

“A decision was taken that we need to put our voices in the public sphere,” Herriot said. “I think what’s happened over the last couple of years is experts have been reticent to speak out, to kind of step out of their clinical role and that has allowed non-experts to fill that void, unfortunately.” 

In an email to CBC News, the Ministry of Health said Monday many major hospital sites, including several sites in Island Health, have Addictions Medicine and Substance Use teams that work closely with patients to develop tailored care plans “that protect the safety of staff and other patients and align with provincial policies.”

The minister did not comment on the “pop-up” overdose prevention sites.