The province is giving $2.3-million dollars to the Timmins and District Hospital and the Jubilee Centre, to increase addiction services in the region.
As TADH addictions manager Patrick Nowak explains, it will add new beds for withdrawal management and residential treatment for addiction recovery.
“This funding would be divided up between the Timmins District Hospital as well as the Jubilee Centre to give us a total between us of 15 new addictions related beds.”
For the most part, those beds are for Cochrane District residents. However, Nowak says they could be potentially used by the Timiskaming, Sudbury and Algoma Districts.
Nowak, also notes that work is continuing towards the supervised injection site in the former Living Space building.
“I can’t give a specific month or date,” he says, “because things are consistently in flux in that regard. But we’re hoping prior to the summer.”
The rate of opioid abuse deaths in the North is three times that of the rest of the province.