The Sudbury and District Health Unit's needle exchange program distributed 140,000 needles over a two-month period, in July and August 2016.
Ginette Cyr, a public health nurse with the health unit, said those numbers – distributing 70,000 needles per month – are in line with figures before the health unit took over administration of the program earlier this year.
“It's in line with what was previously distributed. It's not an increase,” Cyr said. “It's been noted across the province that there is an increase in injection drug use.”
During the same two-month period the health unit's location at the Rainbow Centre – one of two fixed sites that distributes clean needles to drug users – recorded 450 visits for that purpose.
Cyr said Greater Sudbury has not been immune to the increased use of opioids like fentanyl across the country.
In June, the health unit reported 124 people in Greater Sudbury died from drug toxicity between 2008 and 2014.
Of those 124 drug-related deaths, 108 were due to prescription drugs, primarily opioids like fentanyl and morphine.
“I would say that is a dramatic underestimate of the fatalities,” Dr. Mike Franklyn, who practices addictions treatment in 13 communities across Northern Ontario, said at the time.
Franklyn said the statistics underestimate deaths from drug overdoses because fatalities are often attributed to other causes, like underlying medical conditions, during autopsies.
The city's needle exchange program, called The Point, is meant to reduce the risk drug users might contract blood-borne diseases like HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C.
Cyr said the program has proven successful in that regard.
The needle exchange program also puts drug users in contact with outreach workers with the health unit and its three partner organizations: the Sudbury Access
Centre for Youth, Réseau Access Network and the Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy.
Cyr said that if drug users say they would like to get help when collecting their clean needles, the outreach workers and health-care professionals can refer them local treatment programs.
