Opioid crisis has gone provincewide
In 2016, 11 regions have gone beyond 15 overdose deaths, medical officials say
Health experts painted a grim picture Wednesday morning as they updated Vancouver’s mayor and council on an ongoing opioid crisis that has spread from its “epicentre” in the Downtown Eastside to touch every part of the province.
Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall addressed a sombre Vancouver council chamber Wednesday, almost a year to the day after he announced a public health emergency in response to what he called at the time, “the recent surge of overdoses.”
In the 12 months since last April’s emergency announcement, Kendall said Wednesday that the crisis has continued to escalate, with a “startling” increase in overdoses late last year, and the first months of this year appearing on-track to surpass last year’s death tolls.
Last year saw a “shocking, unprecedented” number of overdose deaths across B.C., said Vancouver’s deputy city manager, Paul Mochrie, with 922 people dying from illicit drugs, or roughly three times the number killed in motor-vehicle accidents.
And while the province’s largest city saw the lion’s share of last year’s overdose deaths, the impacts of synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil have been felt far beyond Vancouver’s city limits, as Wednesday’s presentation made clear.
Rates of overdose deaths per capita increased dramatically in every part of the province last year, including Vancouver Island, the Interior and northern B.C.
In 2015, Vancouver was the only one of B.C.’s 18 health regions recording more than 15 overdose deaths per 100,000 people, the presentation showed.
In 2016, 11 regions reached that level or higher.
Dr. Patricia Daly, Vancouver Coastal Health’s chief medical officer, told council: “The only other declaration of a public health emergency for overdose deaths was in Vancouver in the ’90s, and it was localized in Vancouver.”
The current emergency, Daly said, “has affected every area of the province.”
Fentanyl wasn’t the problem in the 1990s, when the drugs of choice in the DTES were injectable cocaine and heroin, and almost half of the area’s 6,000-10,000 drug addicts were believed to be infected with HIV, The Vancouver Sun reported in 1997.
Out of that emergency in the late 1990s, Daly said Wednesday, some of Vancouver’s pioneering, harm-reduction strategies were born, including Insite, North America’s first supervised injection facility that has saved not only lives, but millions of dollars in cost savings every year, according to a Canadian Medical Association Journal study.
Vancouver’s early adoption of harm-reduction strategies reduced the number of deaths from overdose and HIV, Daly said.
But now, as other parts of the province try to follow Insite’s example, Daly said, they’re waiting for permission from Ottawa, a process she called “far too slow.”
Four of B.C.’s five regional health authorities have applications pending with the federal government for approval to run supervised drug-consumption sites in Vancouver, Surrey, Victoria, Kamloops and Kelowna. But, Daly said, “a year into this crisis there’s been no new ones approved to date. That needs to change.”
Northern Health is B.C.’s only regional authority currently without a supervised consumption-site application pending. Northern Health spokeswoman Andrea Palmer said Wednesday the region was exploring the option, and “we are engaging with stakeholders as we explore a submission for a supervised consumption site.”
The federal government has acknowledged the slow process, and in December, Health Canada announced Bill C-37, which would “repeal the previous, burdensome legislative regime for establishing supervised consumption sites by streamlining the application process.”
Andrew MacKendrick, press secretary for federal Health Minister Jane Philpott, said: “The current process, under the previous government’s legislation, is very cumbersome.”
MacKendrick couldn’t say when to expect decisions on B.C.’s seven pending applications, but said the government hoped to work through them as quickly as possible.
“A year into this crisis there’s been no new (injection sites) approved to date.” — Dr. Patricia Daly