Construction to begin next week on Toronto’s first supervised injection site
TORONTO — Construction on one of three safe injection sites in Toronto is set to begin next week, the city announced Friday, moving forward on a commitment to speed up the opening of the facilities.
The push to hasten the launch of the sites is part of a slate of measures the city announced this week to combat a recent spike in suspected opioid-related deaths.
Toronto’s medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, said work on the first site will start on Tuesday, with plans for it to open on an unspecified date in the fall.
“We know that adding these life-saving health services to our existing services will help ensure that people are not alone when they inject drugs and that medically trained staff are available to intervene if someone does overdose,” said De Villa. “Overdose deaths are preventable deaths.”