GEELONG OVERDOSE DEATHS SOAR

Prescription abuse concerns

STARTLING new research has revealed the number of unintentional overdose deaths in Geelong has surged by almost one-third, amid concerns about increasing prescription abuse locally.

Australia’s Annual Overdose Report 2019, released by the Penington Institute, found drug overdoses killed 77 people in the region from 2013-17, up more than 30 per cent from the five years prior.

According to the data, regional Victorians were more vulnerable than any other geographic population in Australia to unintentional overdose death.

Institute CEO John Ryan said the preventable deaths had to be treated with more urgency in order to stop the climbing death figures.

“You’re more than twice as likely to die of an unintentional drug overdose in regional Victoria today than in 2012,” he said.

“This points to a massive failure to provide the kind of services and interventions that we know save lives.”

The research comes as the Geelong Advertiser reported earlier this year that 38 people had died from heroin overdoses in Geelong in the past five years.

Mr Ryan said death rates involving heroin, pharmaceutical opioids, benzodiazepines and stimulants were increasing more rapidly in regional Victoria than in Melbourne.

“We’re seeing an increasing involvement of heroin in unintentional overdose deaths in regional Victoria,” he said.

“We must treat overdose deaths as preventable. We know what works in saving lives and reducing the harms from overdose deaths. We’re just not doing enough of it.”

Former addict Kane Nuttall, who runs local drug and alcohol support program Power In You Project, said prescription medication abuse had also frighteningly increased.

“The doctors are just giving it out like lollies,” he said. “A lot of clients tell me access to prescription medication is so easy to get … it’s being handed out too easily.”

Mr Nuttall said more support services were needed to prevent overdose deaths.

“There’s just not enough support — all the drug and alcohol services are full.

“There needs to be more funding, so other smaller programs can expand.”

Barwon Health director for mental health, drugs and alcohol services Associate Professor Steve Moylan said they had performed 190 successful reversals that helped people escape serious injury or death from overdose since 2017.

“There has been extensive, prolonged work undertaken to educate opioids users about overdose,” he said.

“The latest data released in 2018 shows Greater Geelong has reversed an upward trend in overdoses, as Victoria’s only local government area to show drastic improvements in overdose fatalities.”