Melbourne injecting room cut ambulance callouts by 70pc, report reveals

Heroin-related ambulance call-outs dropped by about 71 per cent in Richmond and surrounds in the first five years since Melbourne's supervised injecting room opened.

The facility opened in June 2018 in an attempt to arrest the rising number of overdoses surrounding Victoria Street, but has remained a sore point for local residents and businesses because it sits between a primary school and public housing towers.

Ambulances were called to about 48 heroin-related incidents every month in Richmond and Abbotsford when the centre opened, at a rate that was increasing every month, according to National Ambulance Surveillance System data analysed by Monash University and Turning Point.

But the number of ambulance call-outs dropped by more than two every month on average once the facility opened, to 14 a month by December 2023.

This amounts to a 70.7 per cent decrease over the first five and a half years, the researchers reported in a paper published by the International Journal of Drug Policy this week.

Heroin-related call-outs also dropped in central Melbourne (43 per cent) and the rest of Victoria (36 per cent) but by a lesser rate, which was even more pronounced per capita.

The analysis looked at 24,000 ambulance calls over nine years across the state.

Twenty-one people still died overdosing on heroin in the City of Yarra in 2024 alone, Coroners Court data released last year showed.

But the City of Melbourne had overtaken the local government area as the neighbourhood with the most heroin-related overdose deaths.

Council pushes back against supervised injecting room

Residents and local businesses continue to warn the facility has not improved their amenity, despite saving dozens of lives.

City of Yarra councillors last year withdrew support for the Richmond centre at its current site.

Mayor Stephen Jolly told the ABC that the ambulance data showed more supervised injecting rooms were needed across Melbourne.

"In Richmond, the number of people shooting up inside but also outside the facility is as big as ever," Cr Jolly said.

"It's hell for the locals living nearby."

He argued crime had worsened in the area. The criminal incident rate in Yarra dropped in the last 12 months but remained higher than in 2018 and 2017, Crime Statistics Agency data showed.

The number of overdose deaths overall have increased statewide, last year's data from the Coroner's Court showed.

The data showed 2024 was the deadliest year for overdoses in Victoria in a decade, with illicit drugs becoming a bigger contributor to overdoses over the same 10-year period.

Dan Lubman from Turning Point and the Monash Addiction Research Centre said looking at ambulance call-outs rather than deaths gave a fuller picture of heroin harm.

"The steepest change is what we're seeing precisely where the service operates. That area went from more than six times the central Melbourne rate [of call-outs per capita] down to about three," Professor Lubman said.

"The service isn't only saving lives inside its doors. It means fewer overdoses in streets, parks and laneways around it, and that's a benefit for the whole neighbourhood."

The paper argued the data also showed there could be value in adding more supervised injecting facilities.

In 2024, Premier Jacinta Allan scrapped plans to open a second supervised injecting facility in the CBD, following a well-organised campaign opposing it.

The medically supervised injecting room, attached to the North Richmond Community Health centre on Lennox Street, also links people with heroin treatment, dentists and wraparound services like health and legal support.

The heroin market has long been concentrated around Victoria Street in Richmond. Per capita, the area saw 123 heroin-related ambulance call-outs per 100,000 people in June 2018, compared with 18 per 100,000 in the rest of Melbourne and 3.3 per 100,000 across Victoria.

Thousands of overdoses have been managed within the centre since its opening. There have been no deaths on site and consecutive independent reviews estimated dozens of lives have been saved.

Professor Lubman speculated that there were multiple reasons for ambulance call-outs trending down across the board despite an increase in overdose deaths, such as the increasing prevalence of naloxone, which is freely available and reverses opioid overdoses.

The Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association (VAADA) this week released findings that the waitlist for drug and alcohol treatment more than doubled between September 2020 and May this year.