Needs and Relevance Evaluation of a Safe Injection Facility in Monteregie, Quebec

Injection drug users (IDUs) form a particularly vulnerable population, characterized by high morbidity and mortality rates as well as psychosocial precariousness. However, IDUs’ use of health and social services remains suboptimal. In this research project, we studied the relevance of implementing a safe injection facility (SIF) in Monteregie, a suburb of Montreal, Quebec. Numerous IDUs live in Monteregie, but inject in Montreal, where plans to implement SIFs are underway. Questioning the relevance of a suburban SIF is hence logical, although the region’s large size and mixture of urban and rural areas provide a challenging setting. A cross-sectional design combining quantitative and qualitative approaches was used. The first part of the project gave rise to a portrait of the Monteregie’s IDU population and its needs through the analysis of seven databases. The second part aimed at collecting the opinion of IDUs and professionals working with them via semi-structured interviews about the main health and social services in the region. Our findings show that, although similar to the IDU populations from Montreal and the province of Quebec, the Monteregie’s IDU population has lower rates of injection in public areas, homelessness, and infection by HIV and hepatitis C. The participants highlighted numerous barriers to accessibility and continuity of services offered in Monteregie, such as sectorization and the geographic centralization of resources. Whilst the participants considered the implementation of a SIF in Monteregie as relevant, an optimization of existing resources remains the priority to improve the health and psychosocial situation of the IDU population.