Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.06.2014, Blaðsíða 6

6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 20116
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08 — 2014
Hitching A Ride
The ambulance is called Frú Ragnheiður
after the Red Cross’s harm reduction
unit, founded in 2009. A little more than
60 volunteers man the vehicle whose
route is designed to reach as many drug
users as possible five nights a week. Rath-
er than preaching to their clients, the
folks at Frú Ragnheiður simply provide
them with safe equipment that reduces
their risk of contracting infections or
contagious diseases such as HIV.
Hákon, the driver on this particular
two-hour trip, is a retired chef who was
inspired to sign up after his daughter, a
nurse, started volunteering. “I thought,
if she can drive the van, then I’m sure I
can as well,” he says, laughing. The first
client of the night knocks on the door just
after the two other volunteers, Eyrún
and Guðrún, show up. A chatty man in
his fifties with grey hair, he cracks a few
jokes before talking about a leg injury he
suffered years ago and the persistent pain
it has left him with, which he tries to dull
with drugs. After a while, Hákon tells
him we have to get going, and the man
thanks us before almost falling out the
van as he misses a step.
On the way to the next stop, a hostel
that is often frequented by those aban-
doned by society, Guðrún tells me some
clients come in just wanting supplies but
others want human interaction. Guðrún
is a 34-year-old PhD student of anthro-
pology who has just returned from a
multi-year humanitarian mission in Af-
rica. She’s been volunteering two nights
per month with Frú Ragnheiður for the
last half a year and would like to do more,
but she says the shift planner is usually
filled up. “Originally when I returned
home, I had planned to volunteer to help
women in need,” she says, “but when I
heard about this project I was intrigued
and signed up.”
Nobody shows up at the hostel and
Hákon remarks that “it’s a slow night,”
before moving on to our next stop, the
women’s shelter Konukot.
A big fan of harm-reduction policies,
Eyrún, a 31-year-old getting her degree in
recreation studies, joined the programme
around the same time as Guðrún. The
idea is not to punish risky behaviour, but
to find affordable solutions to minimise
the damage of said behaviour. The needle
exchange programme is one such policy,
which aims to improve people’s lives and
reduce long-term costs for the healthcare
system. “What we really need now are
safe injection sites,” she says, referring
to facilities where
intravenous drug
users (IDUs) can
inject their drugs
in a supervised and
clean environment.
Having such a place
would reduce the
number of needles
left behind by home-
less IDUs, such as in stairwells and play-
grounds, as well the number of accidental
overdoses.
As we leave Konukot sans visitors and
move on to our last destination in Mjódd,
a good 10 kilometres from downtown
Reykjavík. The women tell me that it is
a relatively new stop that was added due
to the many drug users in the area. As we
sip on instant coffee in the back of the
van, they tell me that the people who use
their services are quite diverse and face a
lot of unwarranted prejudice.
Twenty minutes pass before Há-kon
tells us to buckle up and we had back
downtown to close out the shift. When
the ambul-ance pulls back into the Red
Cross parking lot, Eyrún and Guðrún
are in the middle of
telling me that the
number of clients
they get per shift
fluctuates a lot, when
a man in his late 40s
knocks on the door.
He enters the van
and timidly asks for
two boxes of 24 gauge
needles, a handful of syringes and some
bandages. He is about to step out when
I ask him how long he‘s been coming to
Frú Ragnheiður. He sits down, thinks for
a moment before answering. “I’ve been
coming since the project started, I think,
and it’s improved my life a lot. I’ve been
healthier and feel better. I don’t know
where I would be without it.”
Keeping It Clean
Riding along in Iceland’s needle
exchange ambulance
Words by Tómas Gabríel Benjamin @Gabrielandmore
Photos by Magnús Elvar Jónsson
On a quiet Saturday afternoon, I make my way to a white
van idling in the Red Cross parking lot. After knocking on
the passenger side window, Hákon, a man in his sixties,
opens the door and invites me in. The inside resembles a
camper van, with two benches flanking a table, and a tea
point in the corner. But instead of pots, pans and kitchen
utilities, this van is filled with boxes of needles of vary-
ing gauges, syringes, alcohol swab packets, bandages, con-
doms, tampons and pregnancy tests, all of which are dis-
tributed for free to the drug users of Reykjavík.
Society | Health
A few days after my ride-along, I
meet with Þór Gíslason, the project
manager of Frú Ragnheiður. Þór
says he was an unlikely candidate
for the job at first, as he was a strong
proponent of the abstinence model
following his recovery from alco-
holism. “It was an alien concept to
me, meeting people’s needs instead
of making them go to therapy,”
he says. “The ideology is all about
reaching out to IDUs and educating
them about how they can reduce the
harmful effects of their lifestyle.”
The Icelandic healthcare system
has plenty of treatment solutions for
people who want to get clean, but
those who are still using drugs are
often ostracised from society and
denied the help they need. This is a
void that Frú Ragnheiður seeks to
fill. Client visits have soared from
157 in their first year in operation to
1,374 in the last year. Of those, a few
hundred of their frequent visitors
have shown notable recovery, with a
reduction in infections and hospital
stays, greatly reducing costs for the
health care system. “Their health
doesn’t just stabilise,” Þór says, “it
improves, as does their quality of
life.”
Unfortunately, the reality is that
2014 will most likely be the last year
Frú Ragnheiður runs. Although it
has numerous supporters, the proj-
ect was always envisioned as an ex-
periment rather than a permanent
programme. The Red Cross believes
it has shown that the state can save a
lot of money by offering such needle
exchange services, and hopes to
hand it off to the city or healthcare
authorities by the beginning of 2015.
Although Þór has yet to receive any
kind of response from those in pow-
er, the newly elected four-party city
council majority recently released
their coalition agreement which
states: "An emphasis will be put on
improving the position of the home-
less and addicts. Harm reduction
programmes will be bolstered or in-
troduced where appropriate."
Prevention
Is Better
Than Cure
Frú Ragnheiður’s
project manager
on the vehicle’s
five-year run
“The ideology is all
about reaching out to
IDUs and educating
them on how they can
reduce the harm their
lifestyle has on them.”
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