Urgent need for injectable addiction treatment in B.C.: addictions minister
VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s addictions minister has tasked health authorities to move quickly to scale up use of an injectable drug that could save the lives of chronic substance users who haven’t responded to treatment with oral medication.
Judy Darcy said hydromorphone is urgently needed for people struggling with addictions and B.C. would be the first place in North America to use it as part of clinical practice.
“If we’re going to save lives and prevent people from being poisoned from toxic drugs on the street we need to provide alternatives and this is an alternative that has been proven by evidence to work,” she said Wednesday.
Darcy was responding after the B.C. Centre on Substance Use released a report providing doctors with guidelines on hydromorphone, which is used at the Crosstown clinic in Vancouver, where some patients addicted to heroin receive injections of pharmaceutical heroin under supervision.