Health unit sounding alarm again on drug poisonings
Higher volume of overdose calls over the past week
Peterborough Public Health issued a drug poisoning alert Monday after an unusual number of calls for service over the past week for suspected drug poisonings.
Friday and Saturday saw a spike in overdose cases including emergency department visits and paramedic calls for service. About eight emergency department visits and seven paramedic calls for service happened on those two days and represented about 13 unique incidents, according to the health unit.
During the last week of April, there were 10 drug-related emergency department visits and 10 paramedic calls for service, the health unit also reported.
“What we’ve been seeing since the new year is just a continuous number of high incidents, higher than normal and higher than expected for both emergency department visits and paramedic calls for service,” said Evan Brockest, health promoter with the health unit.
What they are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, he said.
“We’re seeing a continuation of elevated harms in the community and on an ongoing basis.”
To trigger a drug poisoning alert, a baseline of at least four incidents of emergency department visits or paramedic calls for service need to occur at any given time.
“We did see both Friday and Saturday values were above four,” Brockest said. “That’s what triggered the decision to proceed, sometimes it’s circumstantial, a death in the community might be an additional trigger.”
The health unit has noticed that after alerts are issued there tends to be a lull in the number of cases seen, he said.
“We actually see for several days thereafter, or several weeks that number subside,” Brockest said.
“Sometimes you can predict there might be an elevated number of incidents that can be eased, for example, on long weekends or the end of the month.”
The health unit has issued preemptive warnings about drug poisonings several times in an effort to keep the community safe, he said.
“What this really emphasizes is the need to communicate in different ways,” Brockest said. “We can have a public release triggered by an alert in our system, but we often do mainstream communication through service providers.”
The warnings are intended to reinforce the need for drug users to be safe by engaging in harm reduction.
“We’ll be in constant contact with our partners about reinforcing the need to have one-to-one conversations about the importance of harm reduction,” Brockest said. “Whether it’s not using alone, having naloxone nearby, or making sure they are buddying up.”