Winnipeg’s overdose-prevention van faces funding cut By: Kevin Rollason Posted: 6:26 PM CDT Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023

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This article was published 15/08/2023 (829 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s only mobile overdose prevention site is at risk of closing when federal funding runs out this fall, which it says would put the lives of people addicted to drugs at risk.

The Mobile Overdose Prevention Site run by Sunshine House, which hit the streets as of November 2022, will lose funding on Oct. 31. It’s scrambling to raise $275,000 to keep the program in operation.

Levi Foy, Sunshine House’s executive director, said Tuesday that without continued funding it would be “a significant blow to life-saving harm reduction work in the city.”

“With the continued increase in drug poisonings due to toxic drug supply, we cannot allow this program to discontinue. The community needs to have a safe place to test and use drugs with people they have come to know and trust.”

Davey Cole, who co-ordinates the mobile site, said they help about 2,000 drug users. There were more than 14,000 visits in which 2,300 naloxone kits were given out, and 338 substances were checked, from November 2022 to June 2023.

“Without us, the potential risk is not only not having someone to check on you, but also to monitor what you are using,” Cole said.

“Testing drugs and reversing overdoses is a critical part of the work we do here.”

Winnipeg Centre NDP MP Leah Gazan, who is lobbying to keep the funding in place, said the mobile unit saves lives and should remain in operation.

“It would be devastating in our community to lose this essential harm-reduction service,” Gazan said. “They have prevented thousands of overdoses in the city. They have supported 300 people getting rapid HIV tests.”

Dan Vandal, the Liberal MP for St. Boniface, who is the federal northern affairs minister, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. His spokesman said Vandal was travelling in a remote area of Labrador and had limited phone service.

Charlaine Sleiman, a Health Canada spokeswoman, said the federal government “is deeply concerned about Canada’s opioid overdose crisis and is committed to doing everything possible to help save lives.”

“We need a strategy of prevention, harm reduction and prevention strategies to be linked together.”–Marion Willis

Sleiman said Sunshine House received $385,337 to run its mobile outreach, a pilot project, until Oct. 31.

“All currently funded organizations are aware of the timelines for their projects upon receiving funding,” she said.

“(Substance use and addictions program) is expected to launch a new call for proposals this upcoming September to target community-based support projects including safer supply and other evidence-based health interventions. We encourage all community organizations such as the Sunshine House to apply.”

Marion Willis, executive director of St. Boniface Street Links, said while the mobile unit offers valuable service, funding was expected to end.

“The funding was for a set period of time,” Willis said. “We also have OASIS with funding ending on March 31, but we’re not losing funding, it’s just coming to an end.”

Willis said while operating OASIS, short for Outreach and Supportive Intervention for People Who Use Substances, it is also busy working on raising funding for that program from both public and private donors.

As well, Willis said organizations have been told they can apply again for funding through Health Canada’s substance use and addictions program next month.

“What Sunshine House does is one very critical component of what doesn’t exist,” she said. “We need a strategy of prevention, harm reduction and prevention strategies to be linked together. We need all three pillars to work together.

“The work of Sunshine House is very good work and needed work. In my view, it should continue.”

Bernadette Smith, the Manitoba NDP’s mental health and community wellness critic, said “it would be a massive loss to community safety” for the mobile site to close.

“As someone who recently lost a loved one tragically to an overdose, I know how important it is to have these resources in our community.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca