Panel says links between treatment services, corrections system could prevent overdoses

Two-thirds of people who died of a drug overdose in B.C. during a 19-month period were involved with the corrections system, a panel that reviewed the skyrocketing number of deaths says.

About 18 per cent of those who died had either been on community supervision or were released from a corrections facility within a month of their death, said panel chairman Michael Egilson, who was part of a team of experts reviewing 1,854 deaths.

Inmates who had received drug-substitution treatment such as methadone behind bars would have needed to be offered services in the community, Egilson said.

“There’s an opportunity for services to be targeted for a group that certainly is at more significant risk,” he said, adding those who had been incarcerated could have relapsed in the community and turned to illicit drugs laced with the deadly opioid fentanyl.

“It’s making sure that these people are linked when they’re released, and hooked up with services so there’s a continuation of treatment.”

The deaths reviewed by the panel happened between January 2016 and July 2017, and the report included information from First Nations experts and those in health care, policing, corrections and mental health and addiction.

The panel is calling on B.C. Corrections, the Provincial Health Services Authority and regional health authorities to ensure, by September, that people who are released into the community have access to take-home naloxone, a medication used to reverse overdoses.

It also wants former inmates to be made aware of how to tap into services that check for toxins in drugs, often at supervised consumption sites, and for them to have access to drug-substitution programs providing methadone or suboxone.

Correctional facilities have received services through the health-care system since October, the Provincial Health Services Authority said in a statement.