Ottawa City Health is hoping to provide clean needles, pipes and other items to drug users in vending machines located throughout the city as part of a new pilot project.

Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s deputy medical officer of health, told CTV Ottawa on Thursday that the vending machines would allow drug users to access sanitary supplies twenty-four hours a day.

“In order to prevent transmission of HIV and Hepatitis C, people need sterile supplies each time they inject drugs,” Etches said. “We just aren’t meeting the need.”

The vending machines would be placed outside of existing health centres in the city, such as the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre and the Somerset West Community Health Centre. Currently, drug users can obtain clean needles and supplies inside the health centres; however, users can’t access them during closed hours, such as evenings and weekends.

The director of the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre, Rob Boyd, said the facility is considering joining the pilot project.

“They really are just an extension of the existing harm reduction programs that are in operation in the city and have been for the last 20 years,” Boyd said.

One woman in Ottawa said she was concerned the convenience of the vending machines would only make the problem worse.

“The fact that they can get it so easily and that it might encourage people to do it who might not otherwise do it,” the woman said.

Another woman told CTV Ottawa that drug users would have less incentive to visit health centre counsellors with the new vending machines.

In order to prevent supplies from landing in the wrong hands and to encourage drug users to continue visiting health centres, Ottawa City Health said the vending machines would only operate using special tokens. Drug users would be required to visit a harm reduction program at one of the centres to acquire the tokens.

"They would need to be accessing our services, our needle exchange services, our partner services and pick up a token,” Etches explained.

A launch date for the project hasn’t been set yet because the city is still in talks with potential location partners and looking for a vending machine supplier.

“We expect this will roll out over the next number of months,” Etches said.

With a report from CTV Ottawa’s Eric Longley