EDMONTON — Last month saw an aggressive series of attacks on the remaining life-saving supervised consumption services in Alberta. The permanent closure of the supervised consumption site at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton happened on December 16. The Premier also announced the government’s intention to close services at the Sheldon Chumar Health Centre in Calgary, while the City of Lethbridge passed a motion advocating for the closure of their Overdose Prevention Site.
“In December, we saw announcement after announcement that were a blow to evidence-based addictions care in our province. This is happening in spite of the fact that, when in place, these supervised consumption services save lives, save money, and protect our health care systems from added strain,” says Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “We know what the direct results of these closures will be; more harm, more deaths, more pressure on our EMS system and more folks ending up in emergency rooms and hospital wards.”
Studies show that supervised consumption sites enable cost savings by avoiding emergency services. Yet these site closures are happening at a time when Alberta’s paramedics are being “pushed to their breaking point”, and hospital emergency departments are struggling with “extreme overcapacity” and “disastrous overcrowding”, leading to harmful impacts on our entire hospital and health care system.
“Our hospitals and emergency services are at a breaking point and Albertans are being left to suffer. Our government should be doing everything they can to tackle our capacity challenges and to reduce the demand to ensure these emergency health care services are available for every Albertan when they need them,” said Gallaway. “This means we need a government focused on harm reduction, affordable housing and an evidence-based public health approach.”
Since establishing Recovery Alberta, the provincial government has doggedly pursued an ideological approach to addictions care, including an aggressive shift towards under-regulated private and for-profit services, and passing legislation to allow forced treatment even despite considerable evidence showing this approach puts Albertans at risk of more harm and more fatalities. An audit of Recovery Alberta by the Auditor General is currently underway, announced amid the office's ongoing investigation into the allegations of potential corruption in how health care contracts have been awarded to private surgical companies.
“Despite the government's claims about the success of their so-called Alberta Recovery Model, Alberta remains in a drug poisoning crisis, with multiple lives lost every day due to a lack of access to services. This summer, the Edmonton region hit an all-time monthly high for drug poisoning deaths making protecting and expanding harm reduction services more crucial than ever,” said Gallaway. “What it comes down to is that addictions care is health care. It should be treated as such. Albertans deserve that decisions about our health care services be based on the best medical evidence available, not ideology and political spin.”
Friends of Medicare continues to encourage Albertans to support our calls for urgent, evidence-based action to save lives in the drug poisoning crisis