Siloam Mission now offering opioid agonist treatment in downtown Winnipeg
Posted July 17, 2025 9:13 pm.
Siloam mission launched a new program this week in partnership with 432 health group and Neuromed Mental Health and Wellness Clinic, offering opioid agonist treatment or OAT, prescribing medication that helps ease symptoms of withdrawal.
“I can’t overstate how much we need things like this,” said Tobi Jolly, Interim director of community wellness at Siloam Mission. “432 health groups had approached and asked how they could help Siloam mission out. They provided several options and overwhelmingly our staff thought that an OAT program would be the most beneficial for our community members, so opioid agonist treatment, methadone, suboxone, to support people who are seeking sobriety.”
The program will run out of Siloam Mission’s Saul Sair Heath centre, with an on-site nurse practitioner, and a pharmacist.
“We’ve got a nurse practitioner that’s able to assess individuals for addiction, and prescribe treatment as necessary, and if someone is prescribed treatment for it, that would be methadone and suboxone that kind of stuff, we have on site daily witness dispensing services,” said Kelly Allen, registered pharmacist at 432 Health Group.
OAT mediations like methadone and suboxone work to supress cravings for opioids, manage withdrawal symptoms, and improve day to day functioning for those seeking sobriety. In the first two days of the program, five people were administered medication, two returned the following day.
“A lot of our community has a hard really hard time leaving the area for services, so if they’re referred to a clinic even 5 blocks beyond our radius, some of them are not wanting to go that far or they’re not able to for whatever reason, so having it hear in house for community members looking to get off of opioids is going to be a massive need met for a lot of our folks,” said Jolly.
Though the program is not provincially funded, Minister of Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Bernadette Smith said in a statement:
“This is an all hands-on deck approach. I want to uplift the work of frontline service providers like Siloam Mission who continue to step up to provide Manitobans with the supports they need to get on a path to recovery.”
