Board of Health wants Hamilton to declare opioid overdose emergency
Published November 18, 2019 at 8:41 pm
The Board of Health is asking the city of Hamilton to declare that the city is in the midst of an opioid crisis.
The Board of Health is asking the city of Hamilton to declare that the city is in the midst of an opioid crisis.
At the Monday (Nov. 18) meeting of the Board fo Health, councillor Sam Merulla introduced a motion that asks “the Board of Health recommend to Council to acknowledge and declare an Opioid Overdose Emergency in the City of Hamilton.”
The motion comes as startling statistics from January to December of 2018 show there were 123 opioid-related deaths in Hamilton, which represents a 40 per cent increase over the previous year. Hamilton’s death rate in 2018 was 109 per cent higher than the provincial rate.
In 2018, the City of Hamilton had the fourth-highest opioid-related mortality rate among large urban population centres in Ontario.
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Preliminary data from the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario reported last month that there were 18 confirmed deaths for January to March 2019 in Hamilton; with an additional 19 probable deaths still under investigation, according to information provided by Michelle Baird, director, Epidemiology, Wellness, Communicable Disease Control, Public Health Services.
Also, so far in 2019, Hamilton Paramedic Services has responded to 525 incidents related to suspected opioid overdoses, according to the city’s opioid information system.
In 2019, 12,863 naloxone doses were distributed by Public Health and the Naloxone Expansion Sites, reviving 1,672 lives. In 2018 6,412 naloxone doses were distributed by Public Health Services 568 people were revived.
At the Board of Health meeting, a delegation of McMaster medical students urged the board to write to Health Minister Christine Elliot in support of injectable opioid agonist therapies in managed opioids programs that could help in the treatment of addiction.
These treatments have proven effective where other treatments have failed and the students recommended that this type of drug therapy be used in managed opioids programs.
In introducing the motion to declare an emergency, Merulla asked Dr. Elizabeth Richardson from the city’s public health services to explain why this declaration is important.
“It continues to underscore that this is a critical issue,” she said. “It signals to (other levels of government and the community) that council is committed to working on this.”
Councillor Brad Clark expressed his support of the motion, pointing out that this is a citywide issue and that it’s a “crisis of grand proportion.”
“It would be wise, compassionate and prudent” to support declaring an emergency.
The motion was passed and will go before Council later this month.
After the vote, the Board heard from award-winning Hamilton Spectator reporter, Steve Buist, who was outlining the findings of his latest Code Red report. The series looks at health and mental health statistics in Hamilton and breaks them down neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
The numbers showed that in the city’s downtown core, life expectancy was significantly lower than in the suburbs and opioids have contributed to that grim discrepancy.
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