Island Health will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday after three people were pricked by hypodermic needles last week.
A group of service providers, City of Victoria officials and Island Health will “discuss how we can collectively reduce the number of sharps that may be inappropriately discarded,” said Island Health spokeswoman Meribeth Burton. “We recognize that finding a discarded needle can be unsettling and we want to work together to see what can be done to ensure public spaces remain safe for everyone.”
Fraser Work, director of engineering and public works for the City of Victoria, said participants will “review this issue and determine collectively what we need to be doing to address the problem.”
The aim is to see how everyone can work together, he said, adding that Victoria routinely works with Island Health on issues related to safe and unsafe needle disposal.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said she wrote to Dr. Richard Stanwick, Island Health’s chief medical health officer, and asked him to take action “on this important health issue.” She’s happy to see quick action from Island Health.
On Monday, Victoria police were called to Scruples Salon in the 700 block of Johnson Street after an employee found a needle placed in a planter with the sharp end sticking up.
The woman told police she was pricked last week after tending to flowers in a different planter. She sought medical attention.
Jack Phillips of SOLID Outreach Society, an organization run by and for people who use or have used drugs, plans to attend today’s meeting. He is looking for “actionable solutions” and co-operation between health and outreach agencies to address the issue of discarded needles. Volunteers from SOLID spend four hours every day scouring downtown and picking up needles.
“In the years I’ve been doing street outreach, I’ve never heard about this many incidents in such a small time frame,” he said.
The Downtown Victoria Business Association also employs a team that picks up garbage and needles from the streets.
Island Health gave out about a million clean syringes on Vancouver Island last year, Stanwick told the Times Colonist last week. While most of them are collected and disposed of, some end up on the streets or in parks.
Giving out clean needles reduces the spread of blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C, Stanwick said. He noted that the risk of HIV infection is very low if an uncapped needle has been exposed to air.
On Jan. 9, a woman walking her dog on Pembroke Street was pricked by a needle after she grabbed a paper bag that her dog had in its mouth. That came a day after a three-year-old child was nicked by a syringe at the McDonald’s restaurant in the 900 block of Pandora Avenue.
The Island Health-run Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Services office on Cook Street received three reports of needle pricks for all of 2017.
Last year, Victoria police were made aware of three incidents in which needles appeared deliberately placed to prick someone.
In November, a syringe was found in a city pay-parking dispenser. Security was heightened in city parkades in June after a syringe was found taped to a handrail in the Yates Street parkade. In July, a driver found a hypodermic needle tied to the front bumper of his truck in the same parkade.
— With a file from Carla Wilson
