Paramedics responded to average of 92 drug poisoning calls per day

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The total number of 911 calls to ambulances for drug poisoning fell for the first time in seven years

Brian Twaites, a paramedic with BC Emergency Health Services. Photo by Francis Georgian /PNG Content of the article

BC’s emergency health services saw a drop in the number of drug poisoning calls in the province last year, the first since BC declared a public health emergency in 2016.

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The agency, which operates BC ambulances, said it responded to 33,654 overdoses – which officials describe as drug intoxications – in 2022, down five percent from the year before. The 35,585 calls in 2021 were a 31 percent increase over 2020.

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On average, the agency treated 92 drug intoxications every day in 2022.

While the decline is encouraging, the 2022 figures for opioid deaths that are not yet available have risen above 2,000 for the second year in a row, according to the BC government.

The number of 911 calls in 2022 was still far higher than any year from 2016 to 2020.

And 2023 is not starting well. As of January 19 of this year, 203 drug poisoning calls were received in the province, a daily record.

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The decline in ambulance responses to opioids in 2022 was not evenly distributed across BC. They fell at Fraser and Vancouver Coastal Health Authorities, but rose everywhere else. Northern Health saw the largest increase, up 17 percent from 2021.

“The supply of toxic drugs is everywhere in this province and it’s affecting every community and every area of life,” said Brian Twaites, a paramedic specialist at the agency. Medic Specialists are Senior Advanced Medics who support other Medics in difficult cases.

Twaites, who has worked in Vancouver for most of his 36-year career, said people tend to associate toxic drugs and drug use with Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, or “a bad end of town,” but the reality with people a lot It is more complex to deal with drug use in every part of every community – and often to hide it.

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“It’s in Kits, it’s in Point Grey, it’s in Shaughnessy — it’s everywhere,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what corner of the province you’re in,” said Troy Clifford, a paramedic in the Okanagan and president of the Ambulance Paramedics of BC Union. “We expect overdoses every day.”

He said the typical view of what addiction looks like — someone injecting drugs on the street — doesn’t take into account the range of people paramedics are called to rescue.

“When we see it in the Okanagan, we see a real mix of everything,” Clifford said. “You’re talking about the weekend user, or the people who do it in secret, or the casual user on vacation.”

“You’re going to overdose on overdose after overdose,” said Stu Myers, a paramedic based in Nanaimo. “Emotionally it’s exhausting.”

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In smaller communities, he said, it’s not uncommon to be called to a family home where a paramedic might try to resuscitate someone while a small child is in the room next door.

Drug intoxication is also far more complex to reverse than in the past.

“When we gave people Narcan in the early ’90s, we gave a very low standard dose,” he said. “Now we’re giving people five, six times the standard dose of Narcan before they even start breathing.”

“It’s very intense calls for paramedics and first responders to deal with because people are very, very close to dying,” said Twaites, who explained that patients are often “deeply unconscious” and lack adequate oxygen circulation.

“You only have about four to six minutes before the brain cells actively die off due to the lack of oxygen,” he said. “And a few minutes later you can go into cardiac arrest.

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“We have to get a handle on the respiratory status of these patients, we have to put them in an airway. We need to increase their oxygen levels again. And then we worry about getting the Narcan into them,” he said.

At Fraser Health, where drug intoxication calls have fallen nearly 10 percent since 2021, emergency rooms also saw a drop in visits for suspected drug intoxication.

Preliminary results from the BC Coroners Service also point to a decrease in drug poisoning-related deaths at Fraser Health in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to Fraser Health chief medical officer Ingrid Tyler. The health agency uses this data to identify population groups at higher risk of drug poisoning and then tailor services to the specific needs of those groups.

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Tyler said the complex nature of the poison drug crisis meant that no single solution could address the crisis and the resulting deaths. She said a range of new services, including new overdose prevention centers, counseling teams and drug control services, among others, may have contributed to the decline in drug poisoning in the region.

Visits to overdose prevention facilities in the agency tripled to almost 13,000 in November 2022, up from around 4,000 in November 2021 when the health agency increased the number of facilities, including a mobile facility in Abbotsford.

Drug control services operate at 13 locations across the agency, giving users a better sense of what’s in their medications, allowing them to adjust dosages or even avoid a particular batch altogether.

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Additional outreach teams have been set up across the region, particularly during weeks when unemployment benefit checks are expiring, a time when Tyler says there’s been a well-documented increase in overdoses and deaths.

Tyler said it’s hard to say for sure the additional services are behind the drop in cases, but hopes they’re making a difference.

“The ultimate goal is fewer deaths,” Tyler said. “We have tried very hard to make a difference in the face of this crisis.”

Tracking overdose deaths in British Columbia: who dies and what kills them?

@njgriffiths
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