People registered for the program have to have a history of overdose and also must have tested positive for fentanyl in their urine. ”They don’t have to get up in the morning and go and steal something or find money in the informal economy.” “If they know that they have a secure supply of these drugs their life changes automatically,” he said. Tyndall said the machines are programmed to an individual drug user’s needs, while giving them a certain amount of autonomy and also freeing them from stigma. “Providing an actual safe supply still has a lot of barriers because, in fact, we are asking physicians to prescribe drugs where they have been told not to prescribe because they are dangerous. “The problem right now is getting the system engaged,” he said. Tyndall said there is street-level support for safe, drug-supply efforts such as the MySafe program. Researchers showed that few people with those kinds of opioids in their system overdose.

Alexis Crabtree of the University of British Columbia, said an often-overlooked approach is the use of opioids such as methadone and buprenorphine to treat opioid addiction. “We need more numbers to really show that’s happening and the deployment of five more machines will give us some more evaluative power to do that.”Ī study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called on Canada to seek a new approach in battling the overdose crisis. “The sample size is really small obviously, but it’s had a huge impact to the people’s lives that are currently using it,” he said in a recent interview. Tyndall said there were no overdoses involving people who used the machines and about a third of participants have claimed to have stopped their street drug use. He said the initial pilot enrolled 20 people, with 10 to 12 participants who remain active for follow-up surveys. Mark Tyndall, who has spent 20 years working in harm reduction and is a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia’s school of population and public health. The MySafe pilot project is the brainchild of Dr. “We dispensed nearly 4,000 packets of clean opioids to people who were at risk.” “We’ve had a pilot going in Vancouver since December,” Yantha said. More than 5,000 of those deaths have occurred in British Columbia alone. It’s estimated more than 15,000 Canadians have died of an opioid-related overdose since January 2016. The initiative is an extension of a pilot project using the machines that began late last year in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside - an area that has been at the centre of the opioid crisis. READ MORE: New study calls for new approach to tackling overdose crisis READ MORE: Drug-dispensing machine model should be expanded to fight overdoses: B.C. They are tamper-proof and provide a safe way for addicts to get clean opioids such as hydromorphone instead of off the street. The machines look like ATMs, weigh about 360 kilograms and are called MySafe Verified Identity Dispenser. “A person can access the machine by simply scanning their palm and the machine will know that this person gets this dose (amount) and it will dispense their medication within 15 seconds,” Yantha said in a recent interview.

Dispension will provide all of the data-management services. Victoria will be getting one of five automated drug dispensers being rolled out across Canada this week that can provide safe, doctor-prescribed medication to opioid addicts by scanning their palm.Ĭorey Yantha, president of the Halifax-area company Dispension Industries Inc., said his company’s machines will be leased to pharmacies and safe injection sites in the capital, as well as in Dartmouth, N.S., London, Ont., and Vancouver.

Mysafe profile