Doctors stage another overdose prevention site pop-up at Victoria hospital – BC [Video]

Doctors have once again opened a pop-up overdose prevention site outside a Victoria hospital, as they push the province to make good on a pledge to incorporate the facilities on hospital grounds.

Tuesday’s event outside Royal Jubilee Hospital was the latest in a string of actions Doctors for Safer Drug Policy have staged on Vancouver Island since November.

Dr. Ryan Herriot, a family physician and addiction medicine doctor who co-founded the group said the province needs to follow through on its pledge to direct health authorities to set up overdose prevention sites in hospitals.

Advocates say hospital-based facilities are needed to serve drug users who may either avoid getting treatment without them or be forced to leave hospital grounds and fatally overdose.

“It helps patients stay in hospital and receive medically necessary care, it helps keep nursing staff safe, and frankly it also helps make the system run more efficiently — an emergency department visit is at least …