Premier Daniel Andrews announces the establishment of an injecting room at the North Richmond Community Health Centre. Credit:Justin McManus The model will be based on an injecting room in Sydney's Kings Cross, which has been running for more than 15 years. And former premier Jeff Kennett will oversee an expert panel that will monitor the program once it's up and running. Tuesday's overdose follows yet another death in Richmond, which occurred on Monday night, also believed to be heroin-related. The Age revealed on Monday that 34 lives had been lost so far in 2017 to drugs overdoses in the Yarra council area "and climbing", a 40 per cent surge in the average annual death rate.

The North Richmond Community Health centre. Credit:Justin McManus Smith Street resident Bobby Balent, whose wife alerted the ambulance officers to the woman who had collapsed, said there was nothing unusual about an overdose in his street. "I saw her sitting there on the kerb and said 'something's going to happen here'," Mr Balent told The Age. A woman suspected of overdosing is helped to an ambulance just after the Premier's press conference finished. Credit:Justin McManus "I knew the symptoms, I know what it's like because I see it so often.

"I've got a front veranda and I'd say once every month, every month-and-a-half, I find somebody asleep on it." Premier Daniel Andrews with Channel Nine news reporter Laura Turner who lost her sister Skye to an overdose. Credit:Justin McManus Mr Balent and some of his neighbours have welcomed the news of the injecting room but are not sold on its location, in the North Richmond Community Health Centre. They believe the room should be on Victoria Street, about 350 metres to the north, where much of the heroin dealing in the area is done. The supervised injecting centre in Kings Cross. Credit:Wolter Peeters

There is also concern at the proximity of the injecting room to Richmond West Primary School. "I don't like the location," Mr Balent. "You give me a Sherrin and I could lob it into the playground." Mr Andrews' government had strongly opposed a heroin injecting trial, but the mounting death toll and need to win a by-election against the Greens in the inner-city seat of Northcote helped reverse their decision. But the Premier has rebuffed suggestions the announcement of the trial was politically motivated.

"People are free to say things like that, I don't think that's correct," he told ABC radio. "This is not an issue that's been raised in phone calls and door-knocks and street stalls in Northcote. This facility is not in Northcote." Mental Health Minister Martin Foley told radio station 3AW that the facility and its conditions would be overseen by the health department. "But when it comes to the amounts of drugs, the types of drugs, and the policing around the facility that will be a process jointly established with Victoria Police." Mr Foley said the school next door to the centre supported the trial.

"The facility will come with the strong support of both the school itself, the traders and the wider community because that school and that community have pretty much made it clear to us that they're sick of people dying terrible, lonely deaths in car parks, including the car park of the school," he said. Mr Foley said the centre would accept first time heroin users, but added they would be discouraged from going ahead with trying the drug. "You can show up, establish your identity, be checked medically, but obviously if you're doing this for the first time, our people would seek to dissuade you from that." On his Facebook page, Mr Andrews revealed he was swayed after meeting the mother of a young man named Aaron, who died of an accidental heroin overdose. Aaron's mother Cherie told the Premier she believed her son would be alive if there was a supervised injecting room in Melbourne.

"I know there is no one simple solution here, but when a grieving mum says something like this you sit up and listen," Mr Andrews said. "Aaron's death was preventable. He was a good, young man who loved his family so much ... Loading "Well, I believe the state owes her the same care and compassion that she gave her son in return every single day."

With AAP