It's intended to reduce harm, but few are using Sudbury, Ont.'s supervised consumption site

The supervised consumption site in Timmins, Ont., had more than 17 times as many visits in October than a similar site based in Sudbury, Ont.

The Safe Health Site Timmins, which is affiliated with the Timmins and District Hospital, had 2,313 visits in October. 

The site provides a number of harm reduction services, but 812 visits that month were for supervised consumption, where clients are able to use drugs like opioids with clean equipment, under the supervision of health care professionals.

Greater Sudbury's new supervised consumption site, operated by the non-profit group Réseau ACCESS Network, had 46 visits in October. In November the site had 76 visits, and it has had 34 visits so far in December (as of Dec. 9).

The site shared those numbers with CBC News after several requests.

Greater Sudbury has a population four times greater than the city of Timmins, and the second highest rate of opioid-related deaths in Ontario, with 52.9 per 100,000 people from April 2021 to March 2022.

The Timmins area had 34.1 opioid-related deaths per 100,000 people during the same time period.

I kind of shy away a little bit from saying numbers because these are human beings.- Amber Fritz, manager, Sudbury supervised consumption services

Evie Ali, the executive director of the Go-Give Project, a Sudbury-based organization that provides harm reduction services, said there are several reasons why the Sudbury supervised consumption site has had fewer visits than the Timmins site.

"Our safe consumption site is not the most accessible," she said about the Sudbury location.

"And you know that's largely due to barriers posed by neighbours, other businesses, things like that in the downtown core."

The Sudbury supervised consumption site is located on Energy Court, a street to the west of the city's downtown core, where most services are located.

Ali said Timmins has also done a better job at addressing the stigma drug users face, and ensuring they are aware of services and can access them.

"Timmins started within the hospital breaking the systemic [barriers] there, which has been incredibly empowering for their whole community," she said.

She said physicians in the city, like Dr. Louisa Marion-Bellemare, have also played a critical role in treating people with substance-use disorders and building trust with that population.

Trust-based approach

In 2020 the city's opioid-related death rate rose to 72 deaths per 100,000, but health care workers like Bellemare helped bring it down with a number of interventions, including the supervised consumption site.

Patrick Nowak, the program manager for addictions and outpatient mental health at the Timmins and District Hospital, said it was important to build trust with patients at the safe consumption site.

"We just don't want them to feel judged at a place like this," he said.

"In the past that's definitely been an issue. So it takes a while to build up that trust. And as we build up that trust with people, you know, they become more open with us and we can start having those conversations about connecting them to other services in the community."

Nowak said they didn't know what to expect when they opened the supervised consumption site on July 4, 2022. But each month they've welcomed more clients.

When the site launched in July, it had 669 total client visits, of which 326 were for harm reduction services.

"The mandate of the site is to save lives and I think we're getting there." Nowak said.

Amber Fritz, the manager of supervised consumption services in Sudbury, said it's important for her to focus on the individuals she and her team support.

"I kind of shy away a little bit from saying numbers because these are human beings," she said.

"These are people with lives and families and friends and communities. So you know, Timmins has had a lot of visits and I congratulate them. That's wonderful. but we're looking at it as we're new, we've been operational for about two months, and every single person that has walked through that door has had a safe, empathetic, non-judgmental environment where they've felt welcomed, cared for and supported."

Fritz said the service has continued to grow through word of mouth, and distributing pamphlets to social service organizations and methadone clinics.

She said their location has been a barrier to access for some people, but added people have made the trip to their location to access the services.

"At the end of the day I'm grateful that the site has a home and that we're doing everything in our power to manage those barriers and encourage people to access the service," Fritz said.