Emergency Response Centre set up to combat overdose deaths
VANCOUVER (CP) — B.C. has established a command centre to provide a co-ordinated response to the overdose crisis.
Mental Health and Addictions Minister Judy Darcy told a new conference Friday that staff at the Overdose Emergency Response Centre at Vancouver General Hospital will work with five new regional response teams and community action teams.
She said that could mean linking people who end up at emergency departments with overdose prevention sites, setting them up with housing or providing culturally appropriate services for those who are Indigenous and are likely to fatally overdose at three times the rate of others.
The minister said she is working with various mayors to determine what services their communities need, such as distribution of naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses.
“We’re putting this emergency response centre in place to fuel urgent local action and rapidly implement locally driven solutions on the ground — actions to prevent overdose deaths and actions to support people towards treatment and recovery,” Darcy said. The centre will include staff from the Health Ministry, the First Nations Health Authority, first responders, addiction specialists and “people with lived experience.”
Darcy said people who show up at emergency departments after an overdose will get help from regional and community action teams to fast track them into treatment.
Dr. Patricia Daly, chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, will lead the centre and said data will be collected regularly so health experts are not waiting for statistics that are released every few months by the coroners service.
“We will work with our colleagues in regions around the province who will, in turn, work with local first responders and community partners,” she said.
Treatment of opioid use disorder with drugs such as suboxone is becoming more widespread, but therapy with injectable drugs such as hydromorphone must also be expanded, Daly said.
“That is unacceptable and will be one of our first orders of business,” she said, adding that only about 200 people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are using injectables almost two years into a public health emergency where people with HIV were identified to prevent a further spread of the disease.