SUDU ALARMED BY ISLAND HEALTH’S ROLE IN RESIGNATION OF HARM REDUCTION LEADER AMIDST DRUG TOXICITY CRISIS

SURREY, BC – The Surrey Union of Drug Users’ general membership and Board of Directors are extremely alarmed by news of actions from Island Health which led to the resignation of Dr. Jess Wilder following her role in the organization of a pop-up Overdose Prevention Site (OPS) at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital in November 2024. The SUDU membership stands in solidarity with Dr. Wilder, and condemns Island Health’s response to her advocacy for harm reduction-informed and evidence-based services in solidarity with people who use drugs.

As a community of people who access the unregulated drug supply, SUDU members have been deterred from accessing or denied urgent hospital-based care due to a lack of harm reduction services in hospitals and a province-wide rollback of harm reduction services. Unsanctioned pop-up OPS’, like that supported by Dr. Wilder in November, keep us, our friends, and our family members alive while allowing us to access health care like everyone else. At St. Paul’s hospital in Vancouver, an OPS is an essential part of addictions care. This should be the rule, not the exception, in hospitals throughout Surrey, Nanaimo, and everywhere else in B.C. Services like that organized by Dr. Wilder are supported by decades of evidence. Island Health’s decision to treat Dr. Wilder, a provider for enacting in accordance with these facts to improve care in their community, in this way is ethically and scientifically indefensible. Why are we less deserving of care in Island Health’s eyes, and why are allies like Dr. Wilder punished for providing it?

“From an Indigenous perspective, Island Health should be using an intergenerational trauma-informed approach with their patients and taking into consideration the barriers people go through to get care. What Dr. Wilder has done is in alignment with Island's health’s “so-called” decolonization goals. Now they've gone against her. Why? To keep the colonial framework alive.”

 - Sparkling Fast Rising River Woman, Elder Mona Woodward, SUDU Board of Directors

Island Health decided to create an environment which encouraged Dr. Wilder’s resignation while 7 people continue to die each day in our province due to the toxic drug supply and the systemic health inequities which maintain it. Settler colonialism, structural racism, discrimination in health care settings, drug prohibition, gender-based violence, economic exploitation, and intergenerational trauma are deeply entwined. Island Health cannot claim to uphold its commitment to health equity if it, as an authority responsible for health service delivery on Vancouver Island, actively undermines the good work of clinician-educators who engage in direct action to address policy-based harm. 

“She is doing the right thing, she’s saving people’s lives. As a doctor she’s probably lost a lot of her patients to preventable drug poisoning, so it makes complete sense that she would be an advocate. If anything, we need more doctors like her and it's wrong for Island Health to punish her for fulfilling her hippocratic oath.”

 - Stephen Meier, SUDU Board of Directors

“It’s appalling for Island Health and Nanaimo General to cave to political pressure and the backlash on harm reduction against one of their own. It’s refreshing to see a doctor centering patient care and trying to prevent more needless loss of life.”

 - Gina Egilson, SUDU Board of Directors 

Clinician-allies like Dr. Wilder acting outside of the confines of institutional preferences has been an integral part of harm reduction’s history. Syringe exchange, sanctioned supervised consumption sites, take home naloxone, and access to anti-retroviral drugs amidst the HIV/AIDS crisis were fought for and won by social movements who worked alongside allied health care workers, many of whom engaged in civil disobedience. Island Health’s actions will send a chilling message to other clinicians seeking to support similar kinds of social change, or incorporate harm reduction-informed care into their practice in general, that concerns us deeply. By leaving Dr. Wilder with little choice but to resign, Island Health has decided to unjustly punish a community-engaged physician leader for supporting the delivery of urgently needed, evidence-based care for people who use drugs. SUDU urges Island Health to reconsider its misinformed approach, issue an apology, and commit to engaging with Doctors for Safer Drug Policy to implement the organization’s demands. 

Media Contact:

SUDU Board of Directors

Email: sudu@sudu.ca