Medical Director makes plea for second injecting room in Melbourne

A Medical Director has called for a second injecting room in Melbourne’s CBD, despite Wayne Gatt and the police union abandoning support for it.

Tom Elliott is opposed to the idea, labelling the injecting room in North Richmond “appalling” having witnessed behaviour in the area deteriorate.

Dr Marianne Jauncey, Medical Director at the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre said rather than relying on anecdotes, independent reviews are the main ways that can help an injecting room thrive.

“All we can do is seek independent review to look at things like public injecting, ambulance callouts, deaths, code blues to the carpark, and on any objective measure that we have, things have gotten better rather than worse,” she said.

“You have to put the service where people will use it, otherwise you don’t see the benefit.”

Press PLAY to hear the debate on whether a second injecting room is needed or not 

Picture: Getty iStock