Vancouver fatal ODs on track for 400 in 2017

VANCOUVER — Despite all efforts to provide support and assistance to intravenous drug users, people are dying of overdoses at twice the tragic rate of last year in Vancouver.

Provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a state of emergency almost a year ago in an effort to speed solutions to B.C.’s opioid overdose crisis.

“We were facing an unprecedented number of overdose deaths and we needed a province-wide response to try to manage it,” he said. “What we had been doing didn’t seem to be working.”

Since then, the provincial government has made $13 million available for health authorities struggling to contain the crisis.

More than 20 temporary supervised injection sites opened in Vancouver, Victoria and across the province.

A mobile medical unit was deployed — although medical staff have since been withdrawn — in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, all of them kitted out with life-saving naloxone and trained staff.

More than 3,000 overdose events have been safely managed since late December.

Despite these measures, more than 100 people have died due to drug overdose so far this year in Vancouver, a pace that would see 400 people dead by the end of the year. There were 216 overdose deaths in Vancouver last year and 922 in the province, roughly five times the number for an average year.

The powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is implicated in about half of all overdose deaths, according to the B.C. Coroners Service. An even more potent and deadly synthetic — carfentanil — has also been found in seized drugs.

Overdose deaths spike sharply with each bad batch of drugs to hit the street. The Vancouver Police Department issued a warning last weekend after 12 suspected overdoses occurred within blocks of each other.

On March 31, the provincial government opened 500 new substance-abuse treatment beds, including 131 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, most of them in partnership with nonprofit agencies.

Kendall is to provide an update on the crisis to Vancouver city council next week.