![\"Naloxone](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/naloxone-kits.jpg\")
Doctors for Safer Drug Policy handed out naloxone kits on Vancouver Island over the weekend of Sept. 27 and 28, 2025. (Claire Palmer\/CBC)Sites could help with ongoing treatment, say\u00a0advocates<\/p>\nA group of physicians on Vancouver Island have rekindled their advocacy for overdose prevention sites\u00a0by setting up their own unsanctioned sites outside of two major hospitals in Victoria and Nanaimo this weekend.<\/p>\n
At the “pop-up” overdose prevention sites outside of Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria and Nanaimo Regional General Hospital by the group Doctors for Safer Drug Policy, doctors, volunteers and community members handed out information leaflets, Naloxone kits and shared experiences.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jess Wilder, co-founder of Doctors for Safer Drug Policy, said she wants the government to renew its plans for hospital-based overdose prevention sites.<\/p>\n
She said people are dying while they wait for access to treatment and recovery, amid a landscape of highly potent and contaminated drugs.<\/p>\n
“We need to increase and ramp up our access and availability of things that can keep people alive while they’re trying to access care,” Wilder said.<\/p>\n
Doctors for Safer Drug Policy handed out naloxone kits on Vancouver Island over the weekend of Sept. 27 and 28, 2025. (Claire Palmer\/CBC)Sites could help with ongoing treatment, say\u00a0advocates<\/p>\n
In 2024, more than 2,300 people in B.C. died from unregulated drugs, according to the provincial Coroners Service.<\/p>\n
Overdose prevention services can be standalone sites or embedded in broader service settings, according to a recent provincial report<\/a>, and allow people using drugs to consume substances in a safer environment where they are monitored for “adverse events” like toxic drug poisoning. Clients can also be connected to other substance-use care, including treatment.<\/p>\n