Vancouver controversial safe injection site became an election issue Monday after yet another published study that he saved lives, by encouraging the author of the study said conservative policy on the site has no basis in fact.
Critics demanded drop of Prime Minister Stephen Harper opposition of his Government to the clinic and abandon their efforts to make it close.
Harper was in Yellowknife Monday where he regarded its strategy anti-drug, saying: it is based on the prevention and treatment.
But the Conservative Government has said in the past that he is not close our eyes to the site of safe injection and claims that it encourages addiction.
The latest study was published this week in the influential medical journal The Lancet. It was written by Dr. Thomas Kerr, with his colleagues of the urban Initiative in health research at the Hospital of Saint Paul in Vancouver.
"Canadians should be concerned with how the Federal Government approached problems such as drug addiction - that they are really not base their decision on science, they based on ideology,"Kerr said."".
The clinic, Insite, opened in 2003 as the first of its kind in North America. It allows addicts to inject their own medications in a healthy environment under the supervision of a nurse, but it requires an exemption from federal legislation of Health Act to operate.
The study concluded the site has helped reduce the number of fatal overdoses in the notorious Downtown Eastside of Vancouver by more than a third.
"It is evidence showing that Insite achieves its objectives [and] it is very important because it shows it prevents death," said Kerr.
Researchers followed fatal overdoses in the immediate vicinity of the clinic over a period of 33 months before the facility opened in September 2003 and 27 months after its opening. The rate of fatal overdose plunged 35 per cent after the opening of the site, the study concluded, while the number of fatal overdoses in the rest of the city fell by all nine percent during the same period.
But the Conservative Government has indicated that he wants to put an end to the exemption and see the supervised injection site closed.
Supporters of the clinic successfully challenged the Federal Government, winning a decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia Colombia later confirmed by the Court of appeal Colombia-British in January 2010 which found Insite is a health care facility and therefore falls within the provincial jurisdictionFederal steps.
Federal lawyers appealed appeal, however, arguing that Insite makes it easier for people to break the law.
This drew the criticism of the then-Minister of health of British Columbia Colombia Kevin Falcon, which emphasized the large body of independent research supporting the clinical.
The Supreme Court of the Canada should hear the arguments on the issue next month.
Kerr, said Monday that the position with the Conservatives on the issue is unlit.
"We really let one not back by trying to use a war on drug United States style, which is a well documented political failure," he said.
"Insite has also been shown very profitable." If you are concerned with the economy, it is clearly something that you need to support. ?
Janice Buchanan, Vice President of the BC Nurses' Union, called the Harper Government to abandon its appeal on the Lancet study, saying that the study shows contributes to Insite drug addicts in detox and retrieve.
"Instead of wasting the taxpayers money on lawyers and the courts to try to stop this service legitimate health care, the Conservatives - and all other political parties - should use this moment as an opportunity to ensure that their health care policies are based on evidence"buchanan""said in a press release.
The Government of the spent approximately 3 million per year on Insite, a pillar of the harm reduction strategy battle.
Studies of more than two dozen in various medical journals welcomed the installation as a success, suggesting that it reduced deaths by overdose, HIV and hepatitis rate and crime in the poor Downtown Eastside 10-block radiuswhere drug users are concentrated by the intravenous route of the city. The Centre of British Colombia for Excellence in HIV / AIDS said that since the opening of Insite, it has been an increase of 30 per cent of the number of drug abusers in detoxification.
Other Canadian cities, such as Victoria and Toronto, have said they want to open their own clinics safe-injection, modelled on Insite.
Liberal MP Hedy Fry, a physician whose electoral district of Vancouver Centre includes the Downtown Eastside, said that Harper must act on evidence.
"If you recognize that addiction is a disease and it is a medical problem, and you must deal with medical solutions, one of the most important things is the prevention of death," said Fry. "[Insite is] this goal in a remarkable manner.".
FRY said that the site is an effective tool for public health.
"Stephen Harper lives in the flat earth society." The evidence, this is what you watch. It works? Good. ?
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