Photo: the staff at Insite reversed 118 overdoses in April.
According to the BC Coroners Service, in March 2018 161 died from an overdose across BC, including 53 people in the VCH region.
In April 2018 there were 592 overdoses seen at nine VCH Emergency Departments. The majority of overdoses occurred in males (71%) and in people aged 19 to 39 years (57%).
In April 2018, there were 10,199 visits to the supervised injection room. Among those, 118 overdoses were reversed.
In April 2018, there were 1,957 visits to the supervised injection room. Among those, 11 overdoses were reversed.
In April 2018, there were 26,841 visits to the five supervised injection rooms. Among those, 212 overdoses were reversed. Note: Data is missing for the VANDU Overdose Prevention Site the week of April 23.
Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care are extremely concerned about the high number of overdoses and overdose deaths in our region and throughout the province and continue to take steps to respond. VCH & PHC and its partners are taking a number of steps to reduce opioid/fentanyl-related overdoses, including new actions this month:
Established 7 new sites where people can obtain take home naloxone kits for a total of 364 sites across VCH
Held 10 trainings on overdose prevention and administering naloxone
Sent two alerts about drug contamination via the Real-time Drug Alert & Response (RADAR) System
SisterSpace held an open house which included naloxone training and spectrometer testing
The Overdose Outreach Team helped 54 new clients.