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

The Medically Supervised Injecting Room at North Richmond Community Health on Lennox Street. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)

Ambulance call-outs for heroin related incidents decreased by more than 70 per cent over the first five years that Melbourne's medically supervised injecting room operated.

A new paper found a drop from 48 calls a month in 2018 to 14 a month in 2023 in the suburbs near the facility.

A local council withdrew its support for the facility last year, citing community safety concerns in the area.

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.

The opening of Melbourne's first medically supervised injecting room coincided with a drop in ambulance call-outs for heroin-related incidents. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)

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.

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 Richmon