By Lara Fominoff @LaraFominoff on Twitter

Opioid related deaths triple in Lethbridge from 2016

Mar 20, 2019 | 1:26 PM

LETHBRIDGE – Since Alberta Health began releasing quarterly reports in 2016 on opioid-related deaths across the province, the number of those who have died in Lethbridge alone from apparent accidental opioid poisoning deaths has more than tripled.

According to the Alberta Opioid Response Report Q4, eight people died in 2016, 15 people died in 2017, and that number rose to 25 last year.

The report also shows that 746 people died across the province in 2018, and on average, two people die every day in the province from apparent accident opioid poisoning. 88 per cent of those died, did so in the province’s largest centres, including Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. Since Jan. 1, 2016, 1,842 people have died.

Combined with numbers from Medicine Hat, there were a total of 37 deaths in southern Alberta. 47 died in Red Deer alone, and 23 in Grande Prairie.

Also in the south health zone, there were 18 deaths due to accidental carfentanil poisoning.

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The demographics also suggest that males between the ages of 25 and 39 are mainly those dying from overdoses.

According to the report, “From 2016 to 2018, the proportion of all drug poisoning deaths that were unintentional (accidental) increased from 84 per cent to 90 per cent, while the proportion of all drug poisoning deaths that were intentional (suicide) decreased from 16 per cent to 10 per cent.”

And methamphetamine has become a much larger issue across the province, especially when combined with opioids.

“The proportion of fentanyl poisoning deaths where methamphetamine was also listed as causing death was 1.5 times higher in 2018 compared to 2016 (44 per cent in 2018, 29 per cent in 2016), and the same when compared to 2017 (44 per cent).”

Chinook Regional Hospital also remains in the top 10 (number 8) most used Emergency Department facility for emergency visits related to harm associated to opioids and other drug use.

An addendum to the report also indicates up to the end of Dec. 2018, Lethbridge’s supervised consumption site had about 2.5 times more visits than Calgary’s site, and more than 4 times the visits of Edmonton’s supervised consumption site.

• Lethbridge: 127,851 visits / 1,303 overdose reversals
• Calgary: 51,922 visits / 716 overdose reversals
• Edmonton: 29,298 visits / 334 overdose reversals
• Red Deer (Temporary Site): 10,180 visits / 233 overdose reversals

More than 130,000 naloxone kits have also been distributed as of Jan. 1, 2019 and more than 8,400 Albertans are on medication assisted treatment for opioid use.