Thunder Bay leads Ontario in opioid deaths per capita. Here’s how 2 organizations handle the crisis

Outdoors the doorway to the group warming shelter on the north-side downtown core in Thunder Bay, Ont., paramedics reply to a suspected overdose.

Workers at Elevate NWO, a community-based hurt discount group in northwestern Ontario, had referred to as 911 after a person was non-responsive in its foyer.

On the identical time, employees had been referred to as a block up the road as a result of there was one other one who was non-responsive.

A day earlier, somebody overdosed within the group’s car parking zone, Elevate NWO government director Holly Gauvin stated. Two weeks earlier, somebody had overdosed within the toilet.

“That is not unusual for us over the past two years. We have been on this location for about six years now, and we have by no means seen numbers like we’re seeing now.”

In 2021, it is suspected 118 individuals died from an opioid-related overdose within the Thunder Bay district alone, in response to the newest numbers from Ontario’s chief coroner.

That is one individual dying practically each three days final yr. 

When speaking concerning the opioid disaster, B.C. is usually talked about, as six years in the past, the province declared a public well being emergency due to drug-related deaths. Since then, the situation seems to have worsened.

On a per-capita foundation, nonetheless, extra individuals died in Thunder Bay than in Vancouver, in addition to each different public well being unit in Ontario. 

The Thunder Bay District Well being Unit’s catchment space had 76.3 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, whereas the Vancouver well being service supply had 72.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, in response to public information launched by the coroner’s workplaces in Ontario and British Columbia.

The state of affairs within the Thunder Bay district has left front-line organizations scrambling to avoid wasting lives whereas navigating a social companies panorama vastly altered by constructing closures and different pandemic-related restrictions.

Elevate NWO is a primary instance. Historically a hurt discount group centered on offering HIV and hepatitis C therapy, care and assist, it expanded its mandate significantly to create protected areas for all group members in the course of the pandemic.

Elevate NWO opened and expanded a warming centre — certainly one of two in Thunder Bay this previous winter — so individuals might be taught extra about hurt discount and entry sources like clear needles to cut back the transmission of illnesses.

“Final month alone, we noticed 1,600 individuals by means of our doorways. That is with the identical staffing ranges that we had seven years in the past, once we may need seen 30 individuals by means of our doorways on a busy day,” Gauvin stated, including an necessary addition to their staff was a First Nations elder who gives culturally protected helps and teachings.

The group additionally moved into the supportive housing discipline, because it opened “hurt discount housing” by means of funding from the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre and the District Social Companies Administrative Board.

The housing consists of three clusters of five-bedroom models — every individual has a bed room and loo, and a typical area is shared. As a substitute of opening up rooms to people, Gauvin stated, they concentrate on bringing established communities of people who find themselves homeless into the flats.

“As a result of they’re a part of a group once they transfer into the models, they naturally watch one another’s backs. So there is a chance for any person to say, ‘Hey, I will be utilizing some substances tonight. Are you able to be careful for me?’

“However I am going to say, even with that precaution in there, now we have had some losses,” added Gauvin. “That’s simply how poisonous the substances are. That’s simply how harmful it has turn into, and why we have to proceed to push for safer provide right here in Thunder Bay.”

A spring 2021 examine out of Lakehead College paints an image of simply how lethal the provision of medicine in Thunder Bay has turn into.

The analysis additionally signifies two-thirds of examine topics who had been taking medicine had been utilizing substances alone, with none helps or mechanisms to extend their security.

In Thunder Bay, there isn’t any “protected drug provide” program, whereby eligible people utilizing medicine would obtain common, prescribed doses as an alternative choice to the poisonous, unlawful drug provide.

Methods to get a deal with on what’s in illicit medicine

However Juanita Lawson, chief government officer of NorWest Group Well being Centre, stated the centre has bought a brand new, state-of-the-art software that would enhance information about what particular substances — akin to benzodiazepines, fentanyl or different artificial opioids — are within the medicine individuals are utilizing.

“It is a new cutting-edge machine that is popping out, and I feel it is the primary one in northwestern Ontario, so we’re actually excited to have the ability to launch that,” Lawson stated.

The machine, anticipated to reach within the subsequent couple of months, Lawson stated, will probably be based mostly at Path 525, the one protected consumption web site within the metropolis because it was opened in 2018.

She added that whereas a rising variety of individuals have used Path 525 in the course of the pandemic, NorWest is working to see the way it could make the service extra simply accessible for group members who don’t use the protected consumption web site.

NorWest beforehand provided fentanyl take a look at strips, which are used to check injectable medicine, capsules and powdered substances to see if there’s any fentanyl within the substances. However Lawson stated individuals had been hesitant about these strips, as it required a important quantity of the drug they had been utilizing they usually did not present the complete scope of what substances had been in these medicine or how poisonous they had been.

Through the pandemic, Lawson stated, NorWest additionally has labored to extend information concerning the toxicity of the drug provide. That features selling the Lifeguard app, which gives real-time details about substances within the metropolis and life-saving info. NorWest has additionally partnered with paramedics to assist individuals saved from overdoses join with hurt discount staff.

Whereas the leaders of each harm-reduction organizations consider their sources and instruments will enhance security for some utilizing substances, they agree it isn’t sufficient.

“We’re not getting there,” Gauvin stated.

There nonetheless must be important investments in hurt discount, supportive housing, community-based helps and poverty discount to reverse overdose loss of life charges, added Elevate NWO’s government director.