Six Islanders died in 2020 due to opioid overdoses
Morrison emphasizes need for better funding for harm reduction services in P.E.I.
Six people in P.E.I. died due to opioid overdoses over the course of 2020; three of these have been linked to the presence of fentanyl.
These grim numbers were presented by chief public health officer Dr. Heather Morrison during a meeting of the standing committee on health and social development on Wednesday. Morrison said P.E.I. has been seeing an increase in accidental overdoses linked to fentanyl over the last year.
Across Canada, public health and harm reduction experts have noted that travel restrictions have increasingly resulted in increased contamination of the supply of illicit drugs, including opioids.
There were five deaths linked to accidental overdoses involving opioids in 2019 and eight in 2018, the highest overall number since the province began documenting statistics. However, none of
these deaths were linked to fentanyl in 2019 and only one was linked to fentanyl in 2018.
Public health authorities documented a total of 17 accidental opioid-related overdoses in 2020, nine of which involved fentanyl.
This represented the highest number of fentanyl-linked accidental overdoses since the province began counting these numbers in 2016.
“Of the 29 accidental deaths on record since 2016, five involve fentanyl,” Morrison told the committee.
“All but one death were of mixed toxicology where, as I mentioned, it also involved one or more non-opioid substances.”
During a meeting of the same committee on Jan. 27, members of the non-profit group PEERS Alliance urged P.E.I. politicians to establish a safe consumption site, a legally sanctioned place where individuals could consume illicit drugs in a place where health professionals could reverse a potential overdose. No individual has died from an accidental overdose in any safe consumption site in Canada.
On Wednesday, Morrison did not single out a safe consumption site as the most urgently needed harm reduction health service needed on P.E.I.
She argued instead for the overall strengthening of all harm reduction services in P.E.I.
“It’s around the array of services, so that the supervised consumption sites would be put in place, ideally with an array of services around to support it,” Morrison said.
Harm reduction often refers to public policies that aim to reduce the harm to individuals who use illicit drugs but could refer to legal substances. Morrison listed several harm reduction programs that have existed for years, such as a needle exchange program, an opioid replacement therapy program that offers methadone and suboxone and a program that distributes naloxone kits.
But Morrison said there is room for improvement in many of these programs.
“The needle exchange program (in P.E.I.) is a program that, I feel, has been underfunded in the last number of years. And due to its success requires more and more dollars each year to run,” Morrison said.
“The number of needles in and out has increased each year.”
P.E.I.’s needle exchange program has seen the number of clean needles distributed increase from 137,149 in 2015 to close to 400,000 in 2020. Morrison said more sustained funding is also needed to improve the service, as the service only is offered between the hours of 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Morrison said the opioid replacement program could be strengthened, as some Islanders pay out of pocket for this service in certain clinics.
“You just don’t want costs to be a barrier,” Morrison said in an interview.
The province is hoping to hire a harm reduction program co-ordinator, who would provide co-ordination of programs focused on various substances, including opioids, alcohol and cannabis.
Overuse of non-opioid substances like alcohol or tobacco arguably cause greater harm to the health of Islanders.
As of 2017, alcohol and tobacco accounted for over $160 million in healthcare costs, which represented the vast majority of health-care costs related to substance use in P.E.I.
“The needle exchange program (in P.E.I.) is a program that, I feel, has been underfunded in the last number of years.”
Dr. Heather Morrison