Nicole Reardon

If you didn’t know where to look, you could easily walk past the frosted glass windows signalling the entranceway to UnitingCare’s Medically Supervised Injection Clinic (MSIC) in King’s Cross, Sydney. With its clean, discreet access, few would suspect this site holds one of the most controversial and successful drug injection clinics in Australia.

Unpack the issues

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The clinic has been running since May 2001 and, while suffering from time to time the scrutiny of individual politicians and the media, it has gained overwhelming public and political support.

Colette McGrath, the clinical services manager for MSIC, has watched how the clinic has helped transform King’s Cross.

“Prior to the Injection Centre being opened, there was a great deal of public injecting occurring in the area, with a high number of injecting drug users suffering and/or dying from overdoses. There were more people dying here from drug overdoses than anywhere else in Australia at that time,” says Colette.

While, statistically, King’s Cross may have appeared the most viable place to locate the clinic, Colette recognises that its introduction would still not have been possible without the support of the local community.

“The King’s Cross community showed compassion towards our client group… They also accepted that there is a large homeless population here and that this group was a part of their community.

“They consequently didn’t want a zero tolerance approach as other areas had used. They were aware this would just move the problem from one area to another. They wanted to deal with the problem in a compassionate way.”

The compassion and respect which the staff and community have shown towards people living with drug addiction has encouraged many to use the clinic. MSIC Clinic

“We have approximately 200 visits a day — which does not mean that we see 200 people. Clients can come in to use the service more than once a day. Over three months, we see approximately 1,000 individuals. It is a very transient population. While we have over 10,000 people registered to use the clinic, we have a core group of clients of between 900 to 1,000 individuals."

The other harsh reality, which encourages drug injectors to use the facility, is that it helps save lives.

“People choose to use drugs for many reasons. Many of our clients have come from fairly traumatic backgrounds,” says Colette.

“Ultimately, we work on the premise that people can change, but only if they’re alive. So we maintain them, keep them alive, educate them about safety, and are ready to help when they want to change, seek help and stop.”

In order to support this journey, the clinic employs a committed group of part-time staff, with four registered nurses, four counsellors and a security guard on duty each session.

“It’s a challenging job,” says Colette. “We are working with people who are currently using and who are not necessarily ready to change. It can be disheartening when you’ve referred people a few times and they come back. You wonder if they are ever going to make it. At the end of the day, though, we’re left with the knowledge that if we hadn’t been there people could have died.”

The staff at MSIC are very aware of this fact, having managed over 2,500 overdoses without any fatalities since the clinic opened. This is an achievement which the clinic is proud of, as Colette says,“It stops people from having to inform some poor parent that their child is dead.”

While the clinic staff welcome and respect their clients, there are strict procedures that they must undertake in order to use the facility. “All clients have to be registered. We inquire about their current health, drug history and whether they have suffered overdoses previously. There are also conditions under which people can use the service.”

These conditions include that prospective clients must be aged 18+, not pregnant or suspected of being pregnant, they must not be intoxicated or accompanied by children, and they must be previous drug injectors.

Although there was some initial suspicion of the service and how it might operate, Colette says, seven years down the track, “The numbers clearly speak for themselves".

“People don’t want to go back to the streets and they don’t want to be treated in the negative way they were treated previously,” she says.

“The most common feedback we receive from our clients is, "Thank you for treating me as a human being".

For more information, go to the MSIC website.