Opioid overdose calls hit record numbers

Firefighters kept busy in July

Calgary fire crews treated a record number of people who overdosed on opioids last month.

The fire department logged 144 opioid overdose calls in July, the most it says it has ever seen in one month. That’s 20 per cent more than the 121 calls it responded to a year earlier and up 450 per cent from July 2016, when it responded to 25 opioid overdose calls.

“That’s a lot of people in distressing circumstances. These 144 calls are individuals who are in a bad way in terms of resorting to overdosing, regardless of whether that’s deliberate or accidental,” said Calgary fire Chief Steve Dongworth. “So for anyone who cares about this community, I think it’s a concern. If you extrapolate that number to the number of people in a year, that’s a lot of people we’re seeing in distress, having overdosed on opioids.”

Along with EMS, Calgary fire crews respond to serious medical calls, such as those involving severe trauma or bleeding, unconsciousness, cardiac arrest or difficulty breathing. Firefighters responding to opioid overdose calls administer Narcan to patients, the nasal form of naloxone that can reverse the effect of the overdose.

On average, Calgary fire says it has administered naloxone to one patient every day this year.

Other months in 2018 have also set records, according to the fire department. It says it responded to 139 calls in March and 134 in January. Prior to April 2015, Calgary fire crews never responded to more than 10 opioid calls in a single month.

It’s just the proliferation andthe availability of opioids such as fentanyl. We know this.

“It’s just the proliferation and the availability of opioids such as fentanyl. We know this,” Dongworth said.

“If you look at the social agencies who are dealing with this, if you look at the law enforcement that are dealing with this, when we talk to Alberta Health Services … everyone’s seeing the same thing. So, in some ways, this isn’t surprising. The only question all the time is when will we start to see these numbers go in the other direction, which I think, of course, is what every Calgarian would want.”

In the first two months of the year, EMS responded to 237 opioid calls in Calgary, according to Alberta Health.

Provincial data shows the number of fentanyl-related deaths is rising in Alberta. As of May 6, 228 people had died from fentanylrelated overdoses this year, the province said last month. That put Alberta on track to average 12.6 deaths per week, up from 11.2 in 2017, when 583 people died.

Dongworth said that one silver lining seems to be that the rate of increase is slowing down year-over-year when it comes to the number of overdose calls that firefighters respond to.

“The increase of 2017 to 2018 suggests there’s a bit of a slow down,” he said. “Hopefully that will continue to be the case, where next year we’ll see low growth or 10 per cent growth rather than 20 per cent growth, and it might start to give us some confidence. Of course, what we need to see is minus-years, where we see less and less.”