THE doctor behind Sydney’s supervised heroin injecting rooms says it’s only a matter of time before Melbourne follows suit with its own facility.
Dr Alex Wodak helped establish Australia’s first needle and syringe program and was instrumental in setting up the medically supervised injecting centre in Kings Cross.
That service, opened in 2001, was the first in the English-speaking world and remains the only service of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
Dr Wodak said there had been a positive reaction from residents and traders to the initiative.
He believes areas like the western suburbs and Richmond would benefit from a similar facility.
“When you have these drug markets spilling into neighbourhoods and local residents and businesses accustomed to seeing people injecting in public places, something needs to be done.”
Dr Wodak said medically supervised injecting centres could have a significant role in dealing with heroin abuse as a medical issue and in cleaning up the streets.
For many users, he says, it’s the first step towards linking with other services and working on issues such as poor health and homelessness.
Extensive annual surveys in the Kings Cross area show almost 80per cent of residents and 70 per cent of businesses support the facility.
Last week the Weekly revealed there were 183 heroin-related ambulance callouts in Brimbank last year – that is, one in every 10 callouts in the state.
“The reason this is happening in Footscray and surrounding suburbs is because it’s a major drug market,” Dr Wodak said.
The doctor was in Footscray last Wednesday to take part in a public debate at Victoria University organised by Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP).
SSDP president Nicole Pitliangas said the debate was designed to bring together the community and families directly affected by heroin addiction with researchers, educators and politicians.
“The Victoria University SSDP is taking a bottom-up approach as we accept that this issue affects our family, our friends, our community and us as individuals. It’s about working together,” she said.
Maribyrnong mayor John Cumming said the debate raised interesting points, but he believed Richmond was a more logical site for Melbourne’s first medically supervised injecting centre.
“If you look at the statistics the problem is much larger in that area and even in the City of Melbourne than in Maribyrnong.”
