Thank you very much. I will try to speak slowly as sometimes my accent might not be the best for the translators, so I apologize for that.
Thank you so much for having me. My name is Eugenia Oviedo-Joekes. I am a Latina woman. I am today speaking from the beautiful unceded territory for the Squamish people, people of the water. I am a professor at the school of population and public health. I am a Canada research chair in person-centred care in addictions.
Following up from the statement from Sarah Lovegrove, and as a continuation of what she was bringing up, one of the key things for continuing this statement is that the overdose crisis emphasizes that we need diverse strategies, and action and co-operation are key. The problems continue escalating, and we need thoughtful and intentional actions, because this is not a problem with one face. It's time to hold fast and continue moving forward, not retreat.
We have a few medications in Canada that we can use for opioid use disorder that are shown to be effective— however, they are very few. There are a couple of other injectable medications that have shown to be effective, but they don't seem to be rolled out as we expected.
As such, the way we deliver these very few medications doesn't seem to be enough to attract everybody, particularly if we leave the non-rural epicentres. We need other strategies. We need to co-operate with other geographic areas. We need to be flexible. We need to designate facilities and expand take-home doses. We need mobile, outreach, home-based models. Other methods have been established to be effective to reach people with disabilities, to reach people who have caregiving responsibilities, to reach people who are far from the facilities.
The people we see come with many other issues not related to the medication. However, sustaining the treatment, making people feel safe is the first step that we need. For that, we need more than just a couple of medications that the system feels comfortable with.
Using substances cannot be a criminal act. It's not a criminal act to drink in public. Nobody goes to jail, even if it's not allowed. All the problems that we have right now over decades and generations cannot be fixed in a few years. We need to be patient and compassionate, and revise the evidence to make decisions. We need to continue improving and not give up.
Thank you for listening.