Valley worst for overdose deaths

More than 2,500 take-home naloxone kits have already been distributed in the Central Okanagan

Interior Health is expanding access to take-home naloxone and increasing access to substance abuse treatment in an effort to address the growing drug overdose epidemic.

From Jan. 1 to June 30 this year, 122 illicit drug overdose deaths were reported in the IH region, 46 of which occurred in Kelowna.

The Okanagan is the most affected region within IH, with overdose deaths in Kelowna in 2017 projected to almost double the number of overdose deaths reported in 2016, Dr. Silvina Mema, medical health officer, wrote in a memo to the IH board of directors this week.

To date this year, more than 2,500 take-home naloxone kits have been distributed in the Central Okanagan and more than 4,500 people have used the overdose prevention services and mobile supervised consumption services, said Mema.

In July alone, the mobile safe consumption site that travels between downtown Kelowna and Rutland had more than 1,300 visits, a 25 per cent increase over June.

Overdose prevention staff have responded to 18 overdoses since December 2016 with no fatal outcomes, she said.

There is currently one opioid agonist therapy clinic in Kelowna, and the waitlist to access the clinic is 11 days, down from four to six weeks in August 2016.

“IH is working to reduce this wait time to under 24 hours and to open an additional OAT clinic in Kelowna,” said Mema.

The city of Kelowna experiences more than one-third of all overdoses and one-third of overdose deaths in the IH region, said Mema.

Kelowna represents roughly 17 per cent of the IH population.

“This highlights the disproportionately high burden of overdoses on the community and health services in Kelowna, along with the disproportionate toll this situation is taking on the people and around the city,” she said.

As of June 30, Kelowna’s projected 2017 overdose death rate was 73.2 per 100,000 people, exceeding Vancouver’s projected death rate of 64 per 100,000 people.

In a recent report released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the Kelowna census metropolitan area ranked highest in the country among 34 cities for opioid poisoning hospitalizations in 2016 and 2017.

Two-thirds of fatal overdoses in the IH region occurred in private residences, while roughly one in eight deaths occurred outside.

Fentanyl has been detected in most overdose deaths this year.