Province to give police, fire services naloxone kits to stem opioid deaths
Safe injection sites get federal protection amid worsening ‘public health crisis’
Emergency naloxone kits to prevent opioid overdoses will be available for all police and fire services in Ontario, and the province has secured federal permission to allow more supervised injection sites such as the one in Toronto’s Moss Park.
Health Minister Eric Hoskins said Thursday the measures are desperately needed to tackle “a public health crisis” that is claiming more and more lives each month.
“We’re dealing with a grave situation,” Hoskins told reporters at Queen’s Park.
“From May to July of this year, there were 336 opioid-related deaths in the province of Ontario. That is up from 201 deaths from the same period, May to July, of last year,” said the minister, who is also a doctor. “This represents a 68-per-cent increase in opioid-related deaths. Each and every one of these numbers is a person: someone who was loved by their family, someone who won’t be coming home this holiday season.”
Hoskins has received an exemption for temporary overdose prevention centres from federal Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor to ensure nurses and others working at the sites are not criminally prosecuted.
“This new ability would strengthen Ontario’s harm reduction efforts in communities and protect the courageous front-line workers at these sites from federal prosecution,” Hoskins said, praising efforts at Moss Park, which he visited with Premier Kathleen Wynne in October.
In Ottawa, Petitpas Taylor said she was “concerned and saddened by the latest data on opioid-related overdose deaths from Ontario.”
“The current crisis is worsening, despite our collective efforts to date,” Petitpas Taylor warned, but said “these overdose-prevention sites are one step in what has been and will continue to be a concerted and urgent response to this crisis.”
It’s not yet clear where any new safe injection facilities would be located in the province, as details still must be worked out with municipalities.
Queen’s Park is spending more than $222 million over the next three years on fighting the opioid crisis, including hiring more health staff and improving access to addiction treatment.
Between July and September, there were 2,449 emergency-department visits related to opioid overdoses in Ontario.
That’s a 29-per-cent increase from the 1,896 such visits in the previous three months and a staggering 115per-cent hike from the same time period a year earlier.
Dr. Dirk Huyer, Ontario’s chief coroner, said the alarming statistics are available thanks to improved tracking of opioid-related overdoses.
“It’s unfortunate that we’re here to say that the news is not good,” Huyer said. “This is incredibly significant and an incredibly large number. This is a phenomenally big issue.”
Huyer said the data revealed “the mean age of the deaths was 41,” and 51 per cent of the deaths occurred in those between the ages of 25 and 44.
“It’s a terrible tragedy from that perspective,” he said, noting a skyrocketing amount of fentanyl found in overdose victims.
“In 2015, it was 19 per cent; 2016, it was 41 per cent; and in the three months . . . of our snapshot (for 2017), it was 67 per cent of the time fentanyl was detected.”
Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister MarieFrance Lalonde said naloxone kits, which are used to revive drug users after overdoses until they can receive hospital treatment, will be offered to all of Ontario’s 61 police services as well as all 447 fire services.
Lalonde said adopting the kits would be “voluntary” for emergency services.
Waterloo Regional Police Service Chief Bryan Larkin, president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, said that “by making naloxone kits available to our officers, police personnel will be better equipped to save lives and protect themselves.”
“Our police officers have been on the front line from the start in dealing with the opioid crisis and worked closely with our government, health and first responder partners,” Larkin said.
Huntsville Fire Department Chief Steve Hernen, president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, said: “Equipping firefighters as well as our police colleagues with naloxone kits gives us one more tool to use in potentially saving someone’s life during an emergency situation.”
Progressive Conservative MPP Jeff Yurek (Elgin-Middlesex-London), who has been pressing the Liberal government to act, said the measures announced are “part of the solution.”
But Yurek, who is a pharmacist, said “it shouldn’t take months of opposition pressure and public outcry for a government to make a sensible decision that could save lives.” New Democrat MPP Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale—High Park) said “there’s so much more they could do.”
“There’s no question the government hasn’t done enough,” DiNovo said.