Minutes from 2017 BCYADWS AGM

These minutes are from the 2018 AGM at the New Westminster Inn at the Quay. Video links are provided to clips of speakers and presentations. 

A document created by BCYADWS to condense the risk mitigation guidelines and provide directions to advocacy. 

This poster created by BCYADWS provides condensed information on the 2020 COVID risk mitigation guidelines. 

This version is toner friendly.

To maintain Canadians’ access to controlled substances for medical treatments (e.g., treatment of substance use disorders and chronic pain), while they adhere to social distancing guidance from public health officials or if they need to self-isolate, Health Canada has issued the attached exemptions for prescriptions of controlled substances under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) and its Regulations. If permitted within the applicable provincial/territorial scopes of practice, the exemptions:

• permit pharmacists to extend prescriptions;
• permit pharmacists to transfer prescriptions to other pharmacists;
•  permit prescribers to issue verbal orders (i.e., over the phone) to extend or refill a prescription; and
• permit pharmacy employees to deliver prescriptions of controlled substances to patient’s homes or other locations where they may be (i.e self-isolating).

We call on you to: (1) recommend that the Minister of Health order the immediate suspension of municipal bylaws which sanction the displacement of people sheltering in public spaces; (2) recommend that the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General direct that police forces immediately and for the duration of both public health emergencies cease expending resources on the enforcement of simple possession and related offenses; (3) re-emphasize to prescribers and their colleges the importance of the new Guidelines for Risk Mitigation in the
Context of Dual Public Health Emergencies to saving lives; and (4) ensure that the level of resources and attention currently being provided to long-term care homes is also afforded to reserves, prisons, homeless shelters and in high-density and high-risk hubs such as Vancouver’s downtown eastside.

This interim guidance document was developed rapidly to provide clinical guidance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, it does not provide a review of the relevant literature and relies on the clinical judgment of prescribers when utilizing this guidance.

People in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) are doing their part to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 by self-isolating;
we need to do our part in supporting them. VCH has new guidelines in place to help prescribers support people who use drugs (PWUD) who need assistance managing withdrawal symptoms due to COVID-19.