Delay On The Second Safe-Injecting Room In Melbourne CBD Put Lives At Risk, Experts Say

Drug experts warn the delay of Melbourne’s second safe-injecting room puts lives at risk as heroin overdose continues to increase in the central business district. 

Ken Lay, the former police commissioner, has been appointed to finalise a report and the location of a second medically supervised injecting room in Melbourne however, the report had passed its due date in 2020.  

Community health professionals said the delay might put lives at risk as they noted an increasing number of overdoses and high demands on immediate support for drug-and-alcohol-related health issues. 

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Health experts said the previous safe-injecting room helped at least 21 lives in its first 18 months and restrained 271 “extremely serious overdose incidents”. 

Research from Cohealth, a community health organisation and provider of choice for the second supervised injecting room, shows a rise in heroin overdose deaths in quarters one and two in 2022, with more than 60 people losing their lives each quarter.  

Cohealth CEO Nicole Bartholomeusz said people continued using drugs despite the pandemic. 

“When we see increases in people dying from entirely preventable causes, we expect our governments to respond, and drug overdoses should be no different,” Bartholomeusz said. 

“We are heartbroken about the number of lives that continue to be lost from drug overdoses, especially because we know that if a supervised injecting service was available, those people would still be alive.”  

Melbourne’s first medically supervised injection room is located at the North Richmond Community Health. 

The supervised injection service was established for an initial two-year trial period and will be extended for three years. 

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