Health unit community survey on supervised injection sites now open

If you've wanted to weigh inon whether or not Windsor should have supervised injection sites, now is the chance.

The Windsor Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) is conducting an online survey with 12 questions that is open until Dec. 17.

This community consultation is part of a process the federal government requires before it can approve the sites in a community.

These sites would be places people could go to inject drugs such as opioids under supervisionto prevent overdoses.

Theresa Marentette, CEO of WECHU, said some of the questions include if people see benefits in having a "supervised injection service" in the city.

"If there are any challenges they could foresee, any concerns, any questions they may have, and lack of knowledge on what a safe injection site would look like, where they think it could be," said Marentette, "Those kinds of questions."

Adults over the age of 16 years who live, work, or go to school in Windsor-Essex are encouraged to fill out this survey, which will be available until Dec.17.

"Substance use is complex and requires more than one approach," said Marentette.

"Supervised injection services have the potential to address the issues that we are seeing in Windsor and Essex County, including overdose-related deaths, public injection and discarding of needles, access to treatment and other health and social services, and Hepatitis C rates."

She said community organizations are looking into the issues as part of the Windsor-Essex Community Opioid and Substance Use Strategy. This survey is intended to help inform decisions around offering such a service in the city.

The health unit will issue a report on the findings of the survey sometime next year.