A BRIMBANK paramedic who attended three overdoses in Sunshine within hours earlier this year supports the introduction of legal heroin injection centres.
Louise Creasey, who has been based in the Hillside and Caroline Springs area for five years, said such a move would make the streets safer.
“I don’t condone drug use in any way but it would make the community safer, to get it away from children, with no syringes left on the ground,” she said.
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A recent HealthWest report found Brimbank paramedics attended 178 heroin-related incidents in 2010-11.
“It happens in car parks, at train stations, in school yards,’’ Ms Creasey said. “I’ve had teenagers approach me for sterile needles – that’s how desperate they are. We were fuelling up at a service station on the Melton Highway at Hillside and they came up and asked me.”
Brimbank is the state’s fourth-worst municipality for heroin-related ambulance callouts.
