Women-only supervised injection site to open in Vancouver

By Andrea Woo

Katherine Bellegarde had just nodded off when she was sexually assaulted. It was six years ago. She was alone. Ms. Bellegarde, a drug user, had fallen asleep in the “chill room” of Insite, Vancouver’s public supervised-injection site.

“I was up for days and needed sleep,” she recalled in an interview outside the facility this week. “I went to the chill, I went to sleep. I only had a basketball shirt on. That’s how he was able to – I woke up to that.”

She ran outside and cried. For several weeks after, she injected in back alleys. What happened to Ms. Bellegarde at Insite is exceedingly rare. But, like her, a small segment of women – for whatever reason – do not feel fully comfortable using the co-ed facility. For them, Vancouver Coastal Health is planning a women-only supervised injection site in the Downtown Eastside.

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