Ottawa Inner City Health says the problem is bigger than just downtow
Outreach workers are worried about where and how people are using drugs after an alarming rise in overdose calls over the past weekend.
On Saturday and Sunday, paramedics in Ottawa were called to more than 30 overdoses. Twenty people needed to be taken to the hospital.
Rob Boyd, the CEO of Ottawa Inner City Health, says that his group can offer a safe place to use drugs, but that’s not the whole problem.
“About 70% of overdoses in Ottawa and the rest of Ontario happen in private homes,” he said.
A spokesman for the Ottawa Paramedic Service, Marc-Antoine Deschamps, says that it’s not just a problem in the downtown core.
“It can happen in any class and in any part of the city,” said Deschamps.
The most recent information from Ottawa Public Health shows that in May;117 people went to the emergency room.Caused by too much opioid use. That’s the second highest total for a single month since the agency started keeping track of this information five years ago.
In a statement, OPH said that the overdose crisis is still hurting a lot of people in Ottawa and that the availability of more dangerous, unregulated drugs has made the problem worse.
Contaminated drugs are still a big problem
Deschamps said it’s hard to know what may have caused the rise in overdoses this weekend, but street drugs are unpredictable and can contain fentanyl or carfentanil.
Deschamps said, “Of course, it’s important for everyone to know that you never know what kind of drug you’re taking.” “You can’t just look and know.”
Cross contamination can also make it more likely that someone will overdose. This can happen when people use the same tools, bags, or scales to measure drugs.
“Someone who uses a pipe that was previously used to smoke fentanyl is now also at risk, because even small amounts give high concentrations,” Boyd said.
Overdoses from stimulants are also on the rise.
Boyd said, “People who think they are getting stimulants like cocaine or crystal meth may actually be getting opioids.” “They are at a very high risk of overdosing on opioids if they have never tried them before.”
Between January 2016 and December 2022, almost 36,500 people in Canada died because of problems caused by taking too much opioids.Health Infobase, which is run by the federal government, says.
Eighty-one percent of these accidental deaths were caused by fentanyl and 79 percent were caused by opioids that were not made by a pharmaceutical company.
More people are smoking than injecting drugs
Boyd also says that more people are smoking drugs instead of injecting them, which means that more people are overdosing outside their facility than inside.
“That’s because people aren’t allowed to smoke there. So, they smoke just outside the site because they know we’ll help them if they overdose on opioids.
People can’t smoke drugs in the supervised consumption site for two reasons. First, provincial funding can’t be used for supervised smoking, and second, it would be bad for health and safety at work.
Boyd said that they are trying to set up a place where this kind of drug use can happen under supervision. He said that would mean making a room with good ventilation that could be quickly left if staff needed to do something.
Something like this would also need more people and more money because it would be another place to watch and react to.