Region wants monthly updates on opioid crisis response
Niagara’s public health department and other agencies have been working to combat the region’s growing opioid crisis, but the progress isn’t occurring quickly or publicly enough for some regional councillors.
“I don’t think we’re stressing this enough that this has to be hurried,” said Niagara Falls Coun. Bob Gale. “It’s not a case of where we should study Toronto or other parts of the world … I don’t want to be a bully on this, but I feel that we have to be more proactive.”
After receiving email messages from a mother who lost a child to an opioid overdoses — one of four grieving mothers who asked Niagara Region to take action during a meeting in late September — Gale asked for reports to be provided at every public health committee meeting during the remainder of this term of council that will provide updates on progress being made toward combating the growing crisis.
A meeting with organizations involved in the crisis, such as paramedics and police, is scheduled for Nov. 16, but Gale said that’s nearly two months since committee members agreed on Sept. 26 “that we had to get something going.”
“It’s unacceptable because we’re losing too many people on this,” he said at Tuesday’s committee meeting.
“I think that we should have a report showing what we’re doing every public health meeting … I’m not satisfied with what is being done.”
Regional Chair Alan Caslin, who seconded Gales’ motion, said “there is activity happening behind the scenes.”
“And the perception is that we’re not acting fast enough, and we need to do something about it.”
Niagara medical officer of health Dr. Valerie Jaeger said it is “not true that nothing has happened,” and “meetings are not where things happen” anyway.
She said there are 22 community services “doing their utmost in this area under conditions that I can only begin to imagine” to find solutions to the problem.
Jaeger said many of those groups have been actively working towards development of a supervised consumption site, also known as a safe injection site, as well as other initiatives such as harm mitigation initiatives, education and advocacy.
“Every life in Niagara is precious. It is not any less precious whether the person dies of an opioid overdose, but it is also not any more precious,” Jaeger said. “It is my job to marshal all our resources to the best of my ability to look at things in the short term and the long term.”
She said the short- term problems are “right in front of our faces and it affects lives in a way that are so vast that you think this has to be preventable, and we’re working as hard as we can to do that.”
But solutions remain elusive. To illustrate the challenges Niagara faces, Jaeger briefly displayed a confidential map of Niagara Emergency Medical Services responses, showing clusters of crosses, primarily dotting Niagara’s major urban centres. The crosses, she said, mark locations where paramedics have picked up patients for suspected overdoses, including some that indicate more than one overdose victim.
It might seem like a practical solution to place a supervised injection site in the midst of those clusters of crosses, but she asked if Niagara should be “racking our brains to come up with something different.”
In Vancouver, she said, a safe consumption site was located in an area where numerous overdoses had occurred, and there are no deaths occurring within that site.
“But their deaths are continuing to rocket, because only seven per cent of users in Vancouver access the safe consumption site,” Jaeger said.
“Toronto will say the same thing. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider it, but it does mean it’s unlikely to be the answer that we’re looking for.”
For many councillors, that was the type of information they wanted public.
“I want it out there right away. I want it out there yesterday,” said Welland Coun. George Marshall.
“I’m learning. The community should learn as well. It should be an ongoing practice to communicate this to the best we can.”