The initiative is thought to have prompted more than 700 injecting drug users to go on buprenorphine or methadone.
Melbourne’s North Richmond will be home to the country’s second permanently funded medically supervised injecting room, with a CBD location potentially opening in the near future.
The permanent funding, announced by Premier Daniel Andrews this week, comes after two positive reviews from independent experts.
During its five-year trial phase, the North Richmond centre has managed more than 6000 overdoses and directly prevented 63 deaths.
Monash Addiction Research Centre deputy director Professor Suzanne Nielsen told The Medical Republic that upwards of 700 injecting drug users had been diverted to opioid replacement therapy so far.
The injecting room initially faced community pushback due to its proximity to a primary school, and criticism around its placement persists.
Professor Nielsen said the location had long been frequented by injecting drug users, and the introduction of the supervised injecting room had improved conditions immediately outside the primary school.
“Having somewhere that people can inject that’s not in the view of the school and is a safe environment is actually a significant advancement for public health and for the community, as well as for the individuals that are using the service,” she said.
Despite the ongoing shift to methamphetamine as the drug of choice among injecting drug users nationally, heroin and other opiates continue to be the drugs most frequently implicated in overdose deaths in Victoria.
Between mid-2020 and mid-2022, heroin alone played a contributory role in 382 deaths in the state, second only to deaths involving diazepam.
“[Injecting drug use] is as relevant now as ever,” Professor Nielsen said.
“And certainly when we look to North America and some of the harms we see there, it doesn’t look like the need for these services is going anywhere.”
But one room is not enough to handle the burden, and Professor Nielsen said GPs and primary care had an important role to play in harm reduction.
“The medically supervised injecting room don’t have a lot of additional capacity,” she said.
“They would like to provide more opioid agonist treatment, but the capacity of the Victorian system in general is a limitation.
“GPs play a really important role in providing [opioid replacement] treatments, buprenorphine and methadone.”
RACGP Specific Interest Group on Addiction Medicine chair Dr Hester Wilson welcomed the announcement that the North Richmond clinic would remain open permanently.
“Whether we like it or not, drug use does happen,” she said.
Clinicians, she said, had the choice to either stay firmly against drugs and “pretend the situation will magically resolve itself”, or to focus on evidence based harm reduction measures.
“You can’t treat someone who has died from overdose,” Dr Wilson said.
Another supervised injecting room has been proposed for the Melbourne CBD, with the exact location yet to be announced.
Former police commissioner Ken Lay was tasked with determining the location but his report is now several years overdue. It’s understood that it will be handed down by the end of 2023.
