Setting up safe injection sites in Toronto could be cost-effective compared to treating drug-users for Hepatitis-C, a new study suggests.
The study, published in the journal “Addiction,” updated a 2012 analysis that recommended establishing supervised injection sites in Toronto and Ottawa as a way to improve the health and reduce harm among people who use drugs.
Researchers said the update was necessary because treatments for Hepatitis-C, an infectious disease common among injection drug users, have changed dramatically over the last few years.
"The new medications are very effective, but they are also very expensive, so it was not clear whether preventing hepatitis C would be as cost-effective as it was just a few years ago" the study's senior author, Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi, said in a news release. "Our analysis also incorporated the speed at which hepatitis C drugs would be rolled out to people who inject drugs and the risk of reinfection among people who continue to inject."
The updated study looked at the cost-effectiveness of establishing safe injection sites in Toronto and Ottawa.
Bayoumi, a doctor and researcher at St. Michael’s Hospital, said there is an 86 per cent chance that establishing one or more safe injection sites in Toronto would be cost-effective compared to treating Hepatitis-C cases among drug users. He said there’s a 90 per cent chance that the move would be cost-effective in Ottawa.
At the moment, Vancouver is home to the only safe injection site in North America.
The researchers did not recommend any specific locations for safe injection sites and said it would have to be up to local communities to decide when and how to proceed. However they noted that drug use is spread out across Toronto and said establishing up to three different locations in the city would be more effective than establishing a single site if the city were to proceed.
