Overdose surveillance

Since 2011, after a spike of heroin-related deaths in Vancouver, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) started weekly monitoring of overdoses at emergency departments (ED) and Insite, Vancouver's supervised injection site, to support local and provincial harm reduction activities.

In April 2016, BC's Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act due to a significant increase in drug-related overdoses and deaths in British Columbia. In response to the declaration, a series of harm reduction activities were implemented in the VCH region, including the creation of overdose prevention sites (OPSs) in highly affected areas. Enhanced epidemiology and surveillance programs were implemented at VCH to monitor and evaluate the additional harm reduction interventions.

These updates summarize overdose visits in 9 EDs, and at supervised injection services and overdose prevention sites within the VCH region.

Overdose surveillance updates 2018

Week 15 April 8 - April 14, 2018

Week 14 April 1 - April 7, 2018

Week 13 March 25 - March 31, 2018

Week 12 March 18 - March 24, 2018

Week 11 March 11 - March 17, 2018

Week 10 March 4 - March 10, 2018

Week 9 February 25 - March 3, 2018

Week 8 February 18 - February 24, 2018

Week 7 February 11 - February 17, 2018

Week 6 February 4 - February 10, 2018

Week 5 January 28 - February 3, 2018

Week 4 January 21 - January 27, 2018

Week 3 January 14 - January 20, 2018

Week 2 January 7, 2017 - January 13, 2018

Week 1 December 31, 2017 - January 6, 2018

Please note these numbers only reflect the suspected overdoses identified by the surveillance systems and may not represent the actual overdoses in each site. All data are considered preliminary and may change as more data are received.