Rebuilding a Safe Haven for Future Crises

These last few months, we have been concentrating our efforts in raising awareness about the harsh reality of rising numbers of deaths due to overdose in Puerto Rico, just as in the United States.  Previously we did not have numbers to back up what our staff was reporting and experiencing on the ground: the fact that Fentanyl hit the markets in Puerto Rico and that heroin and cocaine where being mixed with this potent substance.  Our staff have been warning the Department of Health that our participants where reporting higher number of overdose fatalities and non fatal overdoses.  Our concerns where no paid much attention to.  Only recently did the government began to pay attention to our warning and in the last couple of month we have seen some numbers and reports by the department of health supporting the sad reality we were witnessing.  That is, overdose numbers were on the rise and rapidly growing.  Between 2017 and 2020, at least 1,060 people have died in Puerto Rico of a drug overdose.  We believe this is still an underestimate.  It was only in the last couple of years that the Forensic Insitute included fentanyl in their testing panel for drug overdose.  We have been working non-stop to distribute Naloxone kits to community members as well as drug users, have trained hundreds of first respondents and clinical staff all accross the island and began a media and social networks campaign to make visible this reality. 

With your support we are hoping to increase drug users chances to survive and leave healthy and dignified lives. Thank you for bieng our partners in these efforts.

Links:

• http://www.intercambiospr.org

At Intercambios Puerto Rico, we are committed to bringing health and harm reduction services to marginalized communities and to make visible the need to change punitive public policies that hinder access to care for those who need it the most. In the last months, as part of our efforts to deal with the COVID-19 pandemia, we began to engage vaccination campaigns for homeless individuals and other community members. Our first vaccination efforts were a success, and we were able to vaccinate at least 40 homeless individuals who are also participants in our harm reduction services in Humacao. We anticipated continuing vaccination efforts to our participants.

We are also providing psychological services, nursing care and case management at public housing complexes at Humacao, Fajardo and Luquillo. With La Movil (mobile unit), we can bring mental and physical health services to where people are most in need especially to those who don’t have private transportation (these towns lack public transportation services) are most affected by the past hurricanes, the earthquake and now the pandemia. As part of our new advocacy program, we participated in a vigil organized to commemorate and honor the lives of people who have died due to overdose. This event was a collaboration effort with other organizations that work with people who use drugs and groups of family members who have had an overdose related death in their families to bring attention and create awareness about the need to bring about strategies that prevent and attend to this public health problem that is costing so many preventable deaths day by day.

Among other exciting news, Intercambios Puerto Rico is finally ready to launch its first and new integrated health services clinic with a harm reduction approach focused on serving primarily who use drugs and who may be homeless in the municipality of Fajardo. In addition to health services, the clinic will provide biopsychosocial services and treatment to our community. We are extremely happy to be able to continue expanding the scopes of services we bring to our communities, so they may have opportunities to fully exercise their right to health and dignity, as well as contribute to create a more just society for all. We thank you for your continued support and invite you to share our news with family and friends who might want to help support our efforts!

Links:

• Intercambios Puerto RIco website