Here's where I'm coming from

I would like to be transparent about my own biases toward Insite. I am a community health nurse who has worked in the downtown east side for many years, including two years which I spent working at the Supervised Injection Site. I'm still a casual employee there and pick up shifts once in a while. So it's not like I'm a completely disinterested party.

However, my concern is not about keeeping a job. What I'm most worried about is seeing such a terrific, innovative, successful service bite the dust. From my (quite personal) perspective, here are the top 3 reasons to keep Insite open:

1. Saving Lives- Insite staff have attended to 336 overdoses since March 2004. Some of those people would have died if they had been alone.

2. Making Connections - Insite has attracted a group of people that are hard to engage. It's hard to get drug users to trust nurses, counsellors, and support staff, but Insite has been really successful at this. I have had the chance to make connections with people who would probably never go in and see a nurse at a clinic. These are people with serious health problems like chronic wounds, heart-valve infections, or HIV. Sometimes, that connection means someone gets convinced to go to hopital, or gets their wound dressed, or gets to access counselling and detox. Other times, it's just a connection to the "straight world" - a chance for clients to talk with someone who is not part of the street scene.

3. Preventing Infections - At Insite, no one shares needles or other injection equipment, and everyone gets some clean supplies to take away with them if they need. According to the research on the Site, Insite's clients are less likely than others to share works - even when they are using somewhere else. This shows me that Insite has had some success at stopping needle-sharing - a dangerous practice that has been one of the main reasons we have an HIV and Hepatitis C epidemic in downtown Vancouver.