Pemberton organizers preparing for festival goers taking fentanyl
Posted June 24, 2016 3:57 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) The public health emergency declared in BC over the number of opioid overdoses is likely to make experimenting with drugs at a concert this summer more dangerous.
Doctors working at the Pemberton Music Festival are preparing for the chance fentanyl will show up there.
Rockdoc Consulting will have teams on site during the festival in July. President Dr. Sam Gutman says they’ll be getting extra training on what to look for in someone overdosing.
“We will have more naloxone on hand than we’ve had on prior years, but part of our program is we educate all of our teams about substance misuse and some of the negative outcomes that can happen and some of the presentations. This year we’re doing additional preparations for our teams relating to opiate overdose and we also have a more formal protocol on response to first of all identifying an opiate overdose in the field and then activating our usual response but being more aware and more familiar.”
He says they’ve been working closely with festival organizers and the health authority to prevent any loss of life.
Latest numbers from the BC Coroner‘s service show there have been over 300 overdose deaths in the first half of the year.
Gutman warns if you insist on taking pills at the festival, try a very small amount first.
