Wynne pledges help for opioid crisis

‘More needs to be done,’ premier says after meeting doctors, front-line workers

Drug users and front-line workers in the opioid crisis can expect “significant” new life-saving help soon from the province, Premier Kathleen Wynne said after meeting with doctors Monday.

The pledge came as physicians and harm-reduction workers came to the front steps of Queen’s Park with an open letter to Wynne demanding she declare an emergency over a rising number of overdoses, as British Columbia did last year.

They did not get the declaration sought under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, but there was an acknowledgment from the premier of the “devastating impacts” of opioid addiction and overdoses.

“We agreed that what’s happening in Ontario is a public health crisis,” Wynne said in a statement released after the impromptu one-hour meeting that lasted twice as long as anticipated.

“That’s why I strongly reaffirmed our government’s commitment to combat this crisis with additional resources . . . Our government will work more closely with people living with addictions, their family members, front-line workers and volunteers,” the premier added.

In June, the province gave local health agencies $15 million to hire staff and hand out naloxone kits, which are used to revive drug users from overdoses until they can get more thorough hospital treatment.

“But it is clear that more needs to be done,” Wynne said, promising “significant additional resources and supports.”

Health Minister Eric Hoskins is slated to make an announcement Tuesday at St. Michael’s Hospital.

The medical professionals are seeking increased funding to pay for harm-reduction staff now working as volunteers, more supervised injection sites, more treatment beds and testing street drugs before users take them, psychiatrist Michaela Beder said.

“We’re looking for an improved regulatory environment, where sites can open up exactly where people need them, so overdoses can be prevented,” she told reporters.

“The one thing that the premier did make explicit was that any funding announcement would make the funds clearly available faster and that they would go to where they need to go, quickly,” added Dr. Alexander Caudarella, an addictions specialist in Toronto.

Either alone or combined with other drugs, opioids were responsible for about one-third of accidental deaths in Toronto in 2015, a public health report from the city has found.

Increasingly, fentanyl has been blamed for overdoses, prompting police to issue safety alerts. A batch of the powerful drug killed four people and caused 20 overdoses during a three-day period in July.

Leigh Chapman, a registered nurse and one of the organizers of an unsanctioned pop-up injection site at Moss Park in Toronto, said it’s become clear that a stronger response to opioid deaths is needed. She said the pop-up site had 15 people on its first night and that number doubled two weeks later.

“I’m pleased that there’s a lot of advocacy for an emergency declaration. It’s too little too late for a lot of people, including my brother,” said Chapman, whose brother Brad died of a suspected fentanyl overdose in 2015.

“These people are abandoned by the system and they have these unmet needs.

“This is not normal. This doesn’t happen for any health-care issue, where people take matters into their own hands in this kind of way.

“I think an emergency declaration would be a signal to them that they belong in the health-care system.”

Opposition parties said the government’s response has been too slow. New Democrat MPP France Gélinas called for an emergency declaration to increase funding, because “front-line workers . . . are struggling without the resources they need.” With files from Sammy Hudes