Throughout most of 2017 there wasn鈥檛 much let up in the overdose crisis that has been plaguing 91大黄鸭 and many regions across North America as the city was consistently one of the places in B.C. that suffered a high number of overdose deaths.
However in September, with overdose deaths due to fentanyl continuing to mount, the city saw only three OD deaths, drastically down from previous months.
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While no one was saying why that was, Interior Health鈥檚 new board chair Doug Cochrane as well as others in the medical field continued to push a message of harm reduction.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not keeping people safe enough and that鈥檚 why the (overdose fatality) numbers keep increasing so how to change that is something we will continue to work on concurrently with what is being done elsewhere across the province and across the country,鈥� said Cochrane. 鈥淲hat we need to do is keep people safe, work with them when they are ready for a change and support them when they are trying to address their drug dependency.鈥�
Early in 2017, Interior Health was approved to operate a mobile safe injection site, one of the first ones in North America, as 91大黄鸭 and Kamloops were each set up with the site. It allowed users to safely use drugs at a site that included nearby Naloxone kits, designed to stave off an overdose.
With the number of OD calls seemingly never-ending, the 91大黄鸭 Fire Department, whose members are often the first on the scene, decided to have its members switch halls more quickly than normal, allowing members to avoid the mental strain of continuing to treat overdose victims.
As of Dec. 1, more than 1,200 people had died from illicit drug overdoses in B.C. this year.
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