Kamloops’s newest supportive housing complex will also be home to a new overdose prevention site.

It’ll be located inside Spero House at 317 Tranquille Road, and it will be open to the 62 residents in that facility.

Debbie Morris with Interior Health says it will help reduce public drug use in Kamloops.

“This will enable a safe space,” she said. “It will provide an environment where we can support people who use drugs, to monitor them and to respond effectively at the time of need.”

Morris adds a site like this will help save lives.

“We know that a lot of people are dying using along in their own home and this sort of a service really does make that difference,” she added. “It also enables us to provide safer community.”

“It enables us to ensure that needles are discarded appropriately.”

ASK Wellness Executive Director Bob Hughes says the goal is to ensure that residents at Spero House are not using illicit drugs alone.

“If somebody is using the contaminated substances, we want them to come down and let us know they are doing it,” he said.

“It’s so they don’t go up into their room by themselves, consume the substance and nobody knows that they have and then they end up perishing.”

Hughes adds the overdose prevention site is unlike the two supervised consumption sites that are run by Interior Health.

He estimates with this new site coming online, there are about four to five overdose prevention sites across Kamloops.

 

Officials say #overdose reduction and prevention will be at the forefront in a facility like this.

They acknowledge that we are still in the middle of the #opioid crisis in #BC. #kamloops @RadioNLNews pic.twitter.com/U3KsTUp69D

— Victor Mario Kaisar (@supermario_47) March 29, 2019