The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is considering safe injection sites as part of a larger strategy to curb deaths by drug overdose in the area.

A total of 24 people died of opioid overdoses in Windsor and Essex County in 2015, prompting health officials to call it a crisis and implement a plan to address addiction in the region.

"We've seen in our community … that there are a significant number of people who are dying as a result of drug overdoses," said the health unit's acting medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed. "These are all preventable deaths and something needs to be done."

Part of that solution could be supervised injection sites, according to Ahmed, but officials are still working with community partners and drug users to ensure they would be the best possible option.

Windsor-Essex had an overall drug strategy until 2013 when funding for the program "somehow went away," explained Ahmed. The unit is looking to revamp that plan based on feedback from experts and community members.

"With opioids, we want to expand this strategy to cover all kinds of drugs because every community has different types of drugs," Ahmed added.

Coun. Rino Bortolin has been discussing safe injection sites with several groups, including AIDS Committee of Windsor, the Downtown Mission, police and other city officials.

"We recognize how large the problem is and we also recognize how important a harm-reduction strategy is and I think we need to at least start talking about a safe-injection site," he said.

The Ward 3 representative said any serious discussion, though, should involve residents through exhaustive consultation. He used downtown residents as the latest example of how services for mental health and addictions can affect people living nearby.

"I think we forget sometimes and we overlook the fact that the downtown residents, more so core residents, are some of the people most impacted by this issue," Bortolin said.

Safe injection sites are also being sought as a possible treatment option in London, where health officials and addictions advocates are struggling because of a rising HIV rate that is climbing faster than anywhere else in Ontario, along with Hepatitis C and two other types of injection-related infections.

Drug users in the city are injecting themselves with infected needles and leaving them the ground. Advocates argue a safe place with clean needles could make a difference.

Piles of used needles are also appearing on Windsor streets, something Ahmed describes as a "huge public problem," but the health unit is focused on finding a solution to all of the issues, not just one part of it.

"We don't want to create another problem just by solving a tiny bit of it," he said.