The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit has elaborated publicly on the reasons behind its decision several years ago to discontinue a sharps buy-back program which offered one $5 gift card for used sharps, needles or syringes safely returned.
In a presentation to the City of North Bay's Community Safety and Well-Being ad hoc committee covering how the Health Unit has addressed the issue of sharps in the community, Katharine O'Connell, the harm reduction project manager outlined the buy-back program's demise. Medical Officer of Health Dr. Carol Zimbalatti was also present for the meeting.
"We ran into lots of different challenges with the program and that's why it's not running anymore," said O'Connell. "Number one, there were issues with occupational health and safety. Staff dealt with large quantities of sharps that people were stockpiling in the community.
"Secondly, there was more waste of harm reduction supplies. People were coming in, getting supplies, putting the new supplies into a sharps container, and bringing them back to get the $5 gift card."
In municipal circles, a push to return to the sharps buy-back program, coupled with the possible elimination of the City of North Bay-funded $10,000 downtown community sharps bin have been topics of discussion in recent months, predominantly at this same committee.
See related: BUDGET: Decision on future of community sharps bin in the works
See also: Councillor pushes for return to needle buy-back program
In June, Dr. Zimbalatti responded to some of the points raised by the committee regarding harm reduction strategies and made it clear the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit does not see a return to a buy-back used sharps model as the sole solution.
"The Health Unit has not had any recent discussions internally or with community partners about re-instating a sharps buy-back program. While buy-back programs can be seen as useful at first glance, the evaluation highlighted the program was complex to administer as intended and required a large time and financial commitment to operate, even for a short period of time," Zimbalatti stated.
See: Health Unit won't abandon sharps bins for buy-back program
"Offering community sharps bins is an important component of a comprehensive harm reduction approach and ongoing monitoring of their use allows us to determine best locations and how the service can be improved," Dr. Zimbalatti added.
O'Connell continued her presentation, stating, "From time to time the Health Unit tries different approaches — that maybe aren't evidence-based — to see if they do work. One example of that is the sharps buy-back program that happened a few years ago.
"That program ran for two different years. The first year, it ran pretty well." The second year, "We saw an increase in drug paraphernalia coming into the Health Unit. However, we saw a lot more drug paraphernalia going out."
The program accepted sharps brought into the Health Unit in a protective container. For every 100, the client received a $5 gift card.
"We did bring in lots of needles," O'Connell told the committee, "however, speaking to the greater need of food security, housing security, and income security, people figured out ways to access that $5 card without actually bringing back sharps that were used."
O'Connell also noted there were instances of vandalism involving people ripping the sharps containers off of walls to redeem for the gift card.
"It shines a light on bigger issues. People are going to these lengths to try to access a $5 gift card. We're really dealing with broader issues that need to be addressed alongside harm reduction initiatives," she added.
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