CANADA: Needle Exchange Van to Service Maple Ridge

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CDC 08-09-11

CANADA: " Needle Exchange Van to Service Maple Ridge "

Maple Ridge News (08.05.11):: Monisha s; Todd Coyne, Tri-City News

In June, a needle-exchange van began visiting Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, and

Coquitlam, building a client base in each of the cities. Staffed and run by the

Purpose Society of New Westminster, the mobile service is expanding to Pitt

Meadows and Maple Ridge.

The van offers injection drug users (IDUs) and other at-risk populations health

and hygiene supplies, including condoms, syringes, crack-pipe mouthpieces,

alcohol swabs, and sterile water to prevent transmission of blood-borne

diseases.

Some IDUs will share syringes if a clean one is not available, and sharing

needles is a major source of infections, said Darryl Lucas, executive director

of Alouette Addictions in Maple Ridge. Its own needle-distribution program, open

Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., has grown from providing a few

hundred syringes each quarter to about 5,000. Most clients are referred to

Alouette’s program by word-of-mouth.

“We are quite busy when you think about the small Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows

community,” Lucas said. The program is an initial point of contact for IDUs to

access health services, with clients offered referrals to methadone clinics,

detox and rehabilitation programs, and counseling.

Another syringe distribution effort funded through British Columbia Housing has

about 170 clients in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, said Rodney Baker, executive

director of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Simon Fraser branch.