5 ways this doctor says prescribing opioids to drugs users can help

There's a movement in Canadato offer drug users hospital-grade opioidsand London's Dr. Andrea Sereda is leading that charge. She'sbeen prescribing opioids to some of her patients at the Intercommunity Health Clinic for nearly four years.

Right now, Health Canada is currently wading through funding applications from organizations hoping to offer similar programs across the country.

Dr. Andrea Sereda joined London Morning to talk about her Safer Supply program.

What is a safe supply?

Our street supply in London and across the country is mostly Fentanyl right now. But it's cut with many other things. Many samples are full ofcaffeine, GHB, ketamine, anti-depressants. It's reallya toxic kitchen soup andit's making people sick in lots of ways.

The idea around safer supply is offering people a clean drug supply of known potency and known dose so that they can avoid many of the harms that are caused by the toxic street supply right now.

What form are people getting these prescribed opioids?

The model that we're offering in London is a daily dispensed take-home prescription ofpills that the patients then usein their home, on the street or wherever they'relaying their head that night.

Is it safe to take it alone?

It's certainly safer than the street supply. Butwe always advocate that our patients use around other people are use at our supervised consumption site because that gives them another degree of safety.

How do you decide which patient you will prescribe opioids to?

It basically boils down to, do we think they're going to die imminently. It can be death due to overdose, death due to recurrent infections related to injection drug use. It can be death due to street life.

How many patients do you have on the safer supply program?

113.

What does success mean on a program like this?

We look at lots of measures.

1. We know we're decreasing homelessness.
2. We know we're decreasing the number of people in the program who inject drugs. A substantial proportion switch to oral use.
3. We'relookingat their health outcomes. Whether they're managing their HIV, their Hepatitis C, their other chronic medical conditions. All of that is getting better.
4. We know forwomen who are involved in the survival sex trade,alot of them are able to make safer choices around their involvement in that type of work.
5. We know we're decreasing petty crimes.

Why is harm reduction the right way?

Harm reduction saves lives. So we've seen that with the initial needle exchange programs in Vancouver 20 years ago. We've seen that with the push for supervised consumption sites. All of these faced the same opposition at the beginning and all of them have solid evidence behind them to save lives. We know that this harm reduction intervention is also saving lives.

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