Wednesday, 22 March 2023

Medically supervised injecting facilities

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:45): (133) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Mental Health, and the action that I seek is that the minister release the full Ryan review, not just the 25-page summary. This report claims 21 lives were saved as a result of the injecting room, but the coroner’s report suggests one extra person actually died, so the overdose deaths actually went up. The Ryan review reported that the Yarra council found an increase in inappropriately discarded needles, from 20 per cent of needles in July 2018 when the injecting room was first opened to 79 per cent of all discarded needles in June 2022, just four years after it began operation. The review reported that Yarra council was finding 12,000 to 18,000 needles a month – that is up to 14,000 inappropriately discarded needles a month in public places compared to just 3000 before the injecting site was installed. That does not seem like a win to me.

In June 2020 the Victorian government medically supervised injecting room review panel published the Hamilton review. Figure 15 reveals heroin deaths increased from 23 in the 15 months before the injecting room was opened to 25 in the 15 months after the injecting room was opened. Figure 17 shows heroin deaths within 1 kilometre of the injecting room increased from 15 to 16. Figure 64 shows ambulance attendances for heroin overdoses in the Yarra council area increased from 245 to 249.

Concerningly, the report reveals that of the overdoses occurring at the site in the first 12 months, 13.5 per cent had no access to oxygen for 5 minutes. What happened to these individuals? Are they still alive? What kind of recovery did they make, and what kind of care are they currently receiving? A simple Google search reveals that after between 30 seconds and 180 seconds of oxygen deprivation you may lose consciousness, but after 1 minute brain cells begin dying. After 3 minutes neurons suffer more extensive damage and lasting brain damage becomes very likely, and after 5 minutes you die. I seek clarification to be given around the 13.5 per cent of individuals that overdosed who went without breathing for at least 5 minutes, which was reported on pages 39 and 40 of the Hamilton review. Why are we keeping these injecting rooms open when health outcomes seem to be worse, community safety seems to be worse and deaths seem to be increasing?