In a written statement sent to The Canadian Press, CACTUS Montreal executive director Jean-François Mary said he was raising the same issues as the union of care professionals in his representations to the CIUSSS and the Quebec health ministry.
We believe that nurses are a complementary offer to community services," she added. "We're committed to ensuring that we do everything necessary to reduce deaths and overdoses. Carole Morissette, Medical Advisor in STBBI Prevention and Drug Harm Reduction at the DRSP, predicts that a full team will soon be in place. "I'm convinced that with real political will, we'll get there."Īt the CIUSSS, director of human resources Martyne Charland said that a recruitment drive is underway and that they are currently looking to fill two part-time SCS positions.ĭr. "We're not talking about 20 nurses, we're talking about 10," said Joubert. The union believes that by applying the current collective agreement, which already provides for certain incentives, it would be easy to gather enough volunteer professionals to work in supervised consumption services (SCS).
In his view, the problem is not related to a shortage of staff, but to a lack of will on the part of the regional public health directorate (DRSP) and the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal. "Services are not 100 per cent available to the population," said Denis Joubert, president of the FIQ-SPSS Centre-Sud. Their aim was to draw attention to "the risk of death if nothing changes", according to Montreal south central health and social services union (FIQ-SPSS Centre-Sud).
Saying they wanted to draw attention to the situation, dozens of care professionals recently took to the streets in a symbolic action, simulating their own deaths in the middle of the street. This represents an increase of almost three deaths per month compared with the previous year. Six years after the opening of supervised drug use sites in the city, and while a serious overdose crisis continues to claim thousands of victims across the country, the lack of nurses is seriously affecting the effectiveness of these essential harm reduction services.Īccording to overdose monitoring data from the Montreal public health, there will be an average of 14.3 deaths per month in 2022-2023.
0 kommentar(er)
