Med students scour Halifax streets for drug needles and understanding

Dominique de Waard and Brianne Robinson are searching parking lots, grassy patches, and back alleys in north-end Halifax for used needles and other drug-use tools.

The women, both 25, aren'tdrug users in fact, they don't think they've ever met one before but they knowwhere to lookfor their traces. This needle hunt is part of theirsecond-year medical school training at Dalhousie University, designed to takethem out of the lecture hall and onto the streets.

Two ex-drug users, called peer navigators,are guiding the students. It's part of anew outreach program fromMainline, Halifax's needle exchange.

The students gain knowledge about the health needs of a community in a way they can't from text books. "Every time we've come out here, it's been an eye-opening experience," says de Waard.

A piece of rubber may look like regular trash, but the students now identify it as part of a crack pipe.

On a neighbourhood cleanup last Thursday, the future doctors were following Chris Clayton and Wilson Eshouzadeh. Both are peer navigators at Mainline. Clayton has been clean for years andEshouzadeh has been recoveringfrom his opiate addiction for abouta year.Both men have served prison time, and spent many years abusing drugs and survived.

Moments into this strange scavenger hunt, de Waard is the first to spot a dirty needle. It's underfootby a well-used path beside a pit where a building was torn down a few years ago.

Eshouzadeh scurries over, bends down, and with gloved hands picks up the needle with pliers. It could beinfected withHIV or Hep C, so he drops it into a hazardous materials container.

'Hawkeye'gives back

"I love what I do," saysEshouzadeh,41."I'mtrying to help out here, give back."

The students call him "Hawkeye" for his knack atspotting signs of drug use. "He's always willing to explain it to you,"deWaard says.

Eshouzadehsays therespect from the students gives him a"mind-blowing" boost."What? You learned something from me? It should be the other way around, but it's true."

This dailyneighbourhood cleanup continues onto the grounds of a former school now covered in graffiti. The two wide buildings provide plenty of cover for illegal activity. The crack pipes, needles, condoms, and other unsafe garbage scattered about are evidence this is one of several neighbourhood "hotspots" for drug abuse.

Neighbourhoodchildren still run around here.

40,000 used needles collected in one month

Chris Claytoncalls the litteredstreetscape"self-destruction.""We're seeing disease, we're seeing people falling." He sayseach needle found and removed reducesthe risk to the community.

Mainline gave out57,909needles across HRMlast month alone. A total of 39,810dirty needles were returned to disposal sites, but that left about18,000 unaccounted for.

The director of Mainline, Diane Bailey, believes more needles were actually safely disposed of,withpeople returning themto hospitals or pharmacies orburning them.

Mainline'speer navigator programstarted last falland hasalready doubled to 16 peer navigators. The peer navigators also meet with drug users to exchange used supplies for clean ones.

Active drug users can participate as peer navigators, but they're not allowed to use substanceswhile on the shift. Mainline has received $200,000 from the federal government fortheprogramand the groupis aiming to have 30 peer navigators by 2020.

• Mainline Needle Exchange hands out more needles but rations some supplies

Calls for safe injection sites

Mainline has been cleaning up streets since 2005, butthework is a stop gap.

Clayton says Halifax needs a safe injection sitewhere people can get clean supplies and shoot up in a spot where medical help is available."There would be less need for us to be out herepicking up dirty needles and dirty stem kits," says Clayton.

The students say Halifax needs one for the health of drug users.Also known as supervised consumption sites, they'refoundinwestern and central Canada, but there are none east of Montreal.

Nova Scotia's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang, has said the province is looking at the idea, but there areno applications with Health Canada to open one in the Atlantic region.

Clayton says removing the drug garbage from theneighbourhood he's lived in his whole life is "disgusting" and it makes him"sick to my guts that we have to do it."

But he's also feeling"pride" as he watches the group makea difference.

Eshouzadehisweaning himself off methadone used to treathis addiction, and vowsto never abuse opioids again.Teaming up with the students has remindedhim of how far he's come. "At least these two students can say, 'Yes, I seen stuff, I talked to the people that use the stuff.' They can say, 'I kind of know how they feel.'"

'There's a person behind the addiction'

Eshouzadehhopes the partnershipleads the future doctors to consider accepting people with addictions as patients. "I was given a chance.I took it, and I ran with it, and it helped me," he says.

The students aregrateful.

Brianne Robinson, from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.,says doctors can forget there's a person behind theaddiction."They're much more similar to usthan we really think sometimesand it can be easy to judge and not be as supportive as we should be."

She and de Waard, a Hubley, N.S. native,have written an article about their experience and hope Doctors Nova Scotia will publish it.

"We'll never forget this experience," saysde Waard. "We might forget some of our material in class but we'll never forget Chris, we'll never forget Wilson."