Retiring health officer Kendall says opioid response working
Provincial health officer Perry Kendall will call it a career next week, confident the tools are finally in place to tackle the opioid overdose crisis that has ravaged this province.
Kendall has been among the chief architects of B.C.’s response to the deadly wave of powerful synthetic opioids that have largely replaced heroin in the illicit drug supply.
Deputy provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry will replace Kendall when he retires Jan. 31. Henry will become the first woman to serve as B.C.’s provincial health officer.
Health policy has evolved dramatically on Kendall’s watch. He notes the creation of a permanent scientifically evaluated supervised injection site on the Downtown Eastside, a provincewide network of temporary injection and drug-testing sites, and the distribution of life-saving naloxone kits to any citizen in a position to witness an overdose.
He has convincingly advocated for programs that provide addicts with clean pharmaceutical opioids, following in the footsteps of successful programs in Switzerland, Germany and Denmark. And it just might be working. “We are not seeing anything like the number of overdoses in public places that we used to, so the overdose prevention sites and naloxone kits that are out there are having an impact,” Kendall said.
Fentanyl-related overdoses trended sharply up through 2015, 2016 and between January and August of 2017, averaging more than 100 deaths a month. September and October saw the first notable dip, with 64 and 74 deaths attributed to fentanyl, respectively. In 2017, 83 per cent of all overdoses were attributed to fentanyl contamination.
“Whether that indicates what we’ve been hoping to see — that is a decline in overdose deaths related to fentanyl — we won’t know until the (next coroner’s report) comes out,” he said. “We’ve thought that before and been wrong.”
While Kendall has announced his retirement twice before — most recently about two years ago — this time he will walk away with the wheels of progress turning at full steam and real momentum provided by the creation of a ministry for mental health and addictions.
“As I got closer to the (second) date I realized that I wasn’t ready to go, that there was more to do as provincial health officer,” he said. “I was leaving a little too early.”