Angie Austin leaned into the microphones and with a wavering voice quietly explained how, as an intravenous drug user, overdose prevention sites across Toronto have saved her life.

“When these guys came along, they saved a lot of people. They saved me,” said Austin, 44, addressing a packed press conference at St. Stephen’s Community House Tuesday morning. “Please don’t take them away. Please. Don’t.”

Austin spoke at the release of a new report that shows two low-barrier sites, St. Stephen’s on Bellevue Avenue and Street Health on Dundas Street East, that had provincial funding abruptly pulled in March 2019 were visited close to 5,500 times over about 14 months.

The heads of those agencies say that should be reason enough for the province to reverse its decision.

Since opening about a year and a half ago the sites have seen more than 5,500 combined visits and reversed at least 67 overdoses, based on numbers in the report by public health researcher Gillian Kolla. The report states the sites prevented overdose injury and deaths, and connected marginalized people with health services who might be “reticent” to access them otherwise because of stigma around drug use.

“People who use drugs are not a homogenous group and so we need a variety of services that meet their needs,” Kolla said.

Funding for the sites was pulled when the Ontario Progressive Conservative government redefined the funding requirements for what are now called Supervised Consumption Sites, then asked all agencies to reapply.

The two sites are legal thanks to a federal exemption and were provided with a one-time federal grant but now operate almost exclusively on private donations. The Street Health site costs about $30,000 per month to run and St. Stephen’s about $20,000, the executive directors confirmed.

Kapri Rabin, head of Street Health, said they are hopeful funding can be restored but their future “is precarious.”

Bill Sinclair, head of St. Stephen’s, said the hope is the findings will spur the province to “reconsider their decision” to cut off funding. “We have proof that we work, that we are needed and that we make a difference.”

A spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said after “a careful review” of all applications, 16 sites were approved and the ministry determined Street Health was too close to two approved sites, wrote Hayley Chazan in an email, and St. Stephen’s failed to meet the requirements around community engagement.

Chazan said they will accept new applications, but not resubmissions.

“Based on our consultations with experts and those with lived experience, we are confident that the model we brought forward is the right way to connect Ontarians struggling with addictions to the care they need and deserve,” Chazan wrote.

During her remarks, Austin shared that she has used drugs for 25 years, intravenous drugs for 15, and said each site has “has their own little family.” Austin is a client of Street Health and also uses the Moss Park location, now indoors but which began as a renegade site run out of tents in the summer of 2017. Without them, “I don’t think I would be alive today,” Austin said.

The report includes usage from spring and summer of 2018, when the sites opened, through August 2019, and includes interviews and focus groups with clients and staff and was funded through Health Canada.

Street Health reported 3,134 total visits, with more than half the clients being women. About 76 per cent of clients used fentanyl and 50 overdoses were reversed, the report showed.

St. Stephen’s recorded 2,357 visits. A total of 17 overdoses were reversed. Fentanyl was the main drug consumed, at 41 per cent, but close to 28 per cent of clients used crystal methamphetamine, the report showed.

In monthly averages determined between April and August 2019, after funding was pulled, the report noted Street Health made about 53 referrals each month to health care and treatment services, while St. Stephen’s made 37 referrals.

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Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, spoke at the release and said the findings show the sites play a “critical role” in the midst of an opiod overdose crisis linked to more than 4,500 deaths across Ontario in 2018, including more than 300 in Toronto, and which is worsened by a lack of affordable housing and health services.

“The illicit drug supply we know, whether here in our city or beyond, has become saturated with fentanyl and fentanyl analogues and harming and killing people at an alarming rate,” de Villa said, adding we need to work harder to implement methods that will reduce harm.

“We do this for alcohol. We do this for cannabis. We need to explore other options for other drugs.”