Fentanyl is a provincial public health crisis

Fentanyl is a provincial public health crisis

by | Nov 18, 2018

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Fentanyl is a provincial public health crisis

 BY JOHN AND JENNIFER, MEGAN AND KYLE HEDICAN

Our family lost a loved son and brother at the age of 26 to a Fentanyl poisoning on April 24, 2017. Ryan was one of 124 people last April in British Colombia to lose their life and 1 of 1,400 British Columbians in 2017 due to fentanyl poisoning. Ryan was not sick – he was a healthy young man who was working as an electrician and had finished eight months of recovery.

It is now 17 months later, and we are on pace for another 1,400 British Colombians to lose their lives to the same preventable cause in 2018. More than four people every day in BC are continuing to die from a fentanyl poisoning. This crisis is affecting everyone, as it’s non-discriminatory in who is dying, affecting everyone from business people, health care providers, construction workers, teenagers to seniors.

Premier John Horgan needs to declare this Fentanyl crisis a Provincial State of Emergency and then call on the other Provincial Premiers to do the same.

In July 2017, our Liberal Government declared a Provincial State of Emergency to combat wildfires extended by our new NDP govererment in August 2017. This Provincial Emergency act was declared again in 2018 due to wildfires. Not a single life was lost to wild fires in either year, yet a contaminated source will kill 3,000 British Colombians and over 8,000 Canadians across Canada in 2017 and 2018. We understand because of the size and amount of fires that it was necessary to declare the Provincial Emergency; we don’t understand how so many healthy people across our province have died and continue to die every day and it is not a Provincial State of Emergency?

Our premiers need to call upon our prime minister and his Liberal government to declare this crisis a National Public Health Emergency now, so real changes can occur to save lives now. Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Tam, stated that “tragically in 2016, there were more deaths from opioid related deaths than from the HIV epidemic in 1995. This is a major public health crisis in Canada.”

Our governments are responsible for the safety of its citizens and it has the responsibility to do all it can to stop preventable deaths, tragically the fear of losing votes and optics are preventing this.

The Hedicans are Comox Valley residents 

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Only safe source will curb overdose crisis

Only safe source will curb overdose crisis

by | Jun 25, 2018

Only safe source will curb overdose crisis

Courtenay parents, nurse petition Ottawa for system to prevent opioid deaths

BY SHANYN SIMCOE

Over 7,000 Canadians died of opioid overdose in 2016 and 2017. Courtenay parents John and Jennifer Hedican’s eldest son, Ryan, was one of them.

He was 26-years-old and a third-year electrician. He had completed eight months of recovery, returned to work, experienced a relapse, and was found unresponsive on his job site in Vancouver during a lunch break on April 24th, 2017.

Relapse is a normal and anticipated stage of the recovery process and the Hedicans believe that if he had access to a safe source of narcotics, Ryan would not have died by fentanyl-poisoning that day.

In Ryan’s honour, the Hedicans have partnered with me to author a petition to the House of Commons demanding that a system be created to ensure a safe source of substances so that people who use drugs experimentally, recreationally or chronically, are not at imminent risk of death due to a contaminated source.

FURTHER READING: How could this happen?

The Hedicans and I believe that access to a safe, regulated and monitored source is the only solution to prevent overdose and fentanyl-poisoning deaths.

We are astounded at the lack of aggressive action by our federal government in response to such devastating, preventable and continuing loss. We are asking Canadians to join their call to action by signing the petition and pressuring their MPs to demand that our prime minister and government make the policy changes needed to save lives now.

We recently held a signature drive in downtown Courtenay, Campbell River and Cumberland, collecting 781 new signatures.

We are also asking that personal possession be decriminalized to reduce the stigma resulting from the criminalization of substance use. They want our government to adopt a model similar to that used in Portugal, which treats problematic substance use as a health, rather than criminal justice issue. Fear of stigma and punishment currently prevents people from accessing health care services and treatment.

The third ask is that the opioid crisis be declared a national public health emergency.

The number of preventable overdose deaths to date has far surpassed the total number of deaths of all other public health emergencies in the last 20 years including SARS, H1N1, and Ebola, yet the crisis has not achieved national emergency status. Despite the expansion of the Take Home Naloxone program and the establishment of Overdose Prevention Sites, approximately four people die each day from opioid overdoses due to fentanyl-poisoned sources.

Males aged 19-49 are at the highest risk. Sixty-three percent of overdose deaths occurring in private residences. 120 Canadians are dying every month, each one a child, sibling, spouse, parent, colleague, client, friend.

Our online petition has over 2,100 signatures and many paper versions have been mailed in.

FURTHER READING: Sign the online petition here.

MP Gord Johns tabled the petition in the House of Commons for the first time before the summer sitting. You can see his speech here. 

The online petition closes July 25th and the government is required to respond within 45 days. This petition has recently been endorsed by the British Columbia Nurses’ Union.

Shanyn Simcoe is a Comox Valley nurse activist. She wrote this article for the Comox Valley Civic Journalism Project. She can be reached at shanyn.simcoe@gmail.com

 

Injection sites can prevent deaths, not overdoses

Injection sites can prevent deaths, not overdoses

by | Feb 14, 2017

Not many people who moved to the Comox Valley for its small-town feel, access to recreational opportunities or the lively arts scene imagined heroin addicts injecting themselves in public places or one person dying almost every month from an opioid overdose.

But these things are happening here.

The Chambers of Commerce and elected officials don’t want to draw undue attention to this grim reality, but it has become too big to ignore.

More than 150 people died from opioid overdoses on Vancouver Island last year. Although more people died in the larger centres of Victoria and Nanaimo, the North Island (including the Valley) had the highest rate of increase — up 156 percent over last year — in overdoses. Ten people died from overdoses over the past 12 months in the Comox Valley.

And Island Health believes the overdose statistics are actually worse, and that many overdoes go unreported. And heroin kills more people than official death certificates indicate. That’s because heroin metabolizes as morphine, so toxicology reports in overdose cases often list morphine or an opiate as the cause of death.

Opioid deaths have increased sharply because most street heroin today contains fentanyl, which is up to 100 times more powerful than heroin. Just a speck of fentanyl the size of a few grains of salt can kill a 113-kilogram (250-pound) person.

Island Health Medical Health Officer Charmaine Enns told the Courtenay City Council this week that her agency hopes to reduce the Valley’s overdose death rate by opening a safe injection site where trained personnel could administer rescue breathing or Naloxone, a drug that can reverse an opioid overdose.

But these sites are misnamed and give the public a false impression. Island Health staff cannot prevent someone from overdosing, which occurs nano-moments after the drug is injected. They can only prevent the overdosed person from dying.

Enns said the supervised injection site at the offices of Island Health or some other provincial agency will allow staff to interact with users and offer mental health counselling and other services. That’s a good thing, and so is giving people a chance to live another day and get their life back on track.

But there are potential downsides.

To keep people suffering from addiction coming back to the clinics, Island Health staff might have to offer users less addictive drugs, such as methadone, and potentially dispense stronger drugs. If that does occur, the public may have a strong reaction.

The sites also put staff at risk because even a small amount of fentanyl is deadly if it’s absorbed through the skin or inhaled when airborne. Fentanyl’s potency has already harmed first responders from New Jersey to Vancouver.

The public should know what safeguards are in place to prevent this from happening here.

City of Courtenay firefighters have agreed to voluntarily respond immediately to serious medical calls, which includes overdoses. But they will only do so if they are equipped with Naloxone nasal spray, supplied by either the province for free or if the City Council agrees to purchase it.

They will not, in other words, participate in using needles to inject Naloxone, sometimes known by its commercial name, Narcan. To do that increases the chance of contacting fentanyl or needle injuries.

The extent of the heroin addiction problem has been partially hidden because today’s users are often middle-income, white, and no longer habitues of the gritty alleys of urban areas. The use of heroin and other opioids has moved into suburbs and small towns.

Island Health reports that overdose occurrences are widespread across the entire Comox Valley.

All over the province and across North America, people hooked on prescription painkillers find heroin easier to acquire and less expensive. If that wasn’t alarming enough, heroin use has become popular among school-aged teens. U.S. studies show that 3 percent of high school students are using heroin today.

The province was right to declare a public health emergency over the opioid problem. But whether the ministry’s plan just treats symptoms, or provides a lasting solution remains to be seen.

Even though safe injection sites raise troubling questions about enabling addiction rather than treating it, doing nothing is not an option when so many deaths can be prevented.

At the very least, we can learn from this effort, change course based on what is learned, and, at the same time, start thinking a whole lot harder about what it would take to prevent people from becoming addicted in the first place.