Overdose Emergency Response Centre set up in BC to combat OD deaths

VANCOUVER – BC has established a command centre to provide a co-ordinated response to a provincial overdose crisis in an effort to help people access services that could save their lives.

Mental Health and Addictions Minister Judy Darcy says staff at the Overdose Emergency Response Centre at Vancouver General Hospital will work with five new regional response and community action teams to deliver tailored services.

Darcy says that could mean linking people who end up at emergency departments with overdose prevention sites, setting them up with housing or providing culturally appropriate services for those who are Indigenous.

The minister says she is working with various mayors to determine what services their communities need, such as distribution of naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses.

Dr. Patricia Daly, chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, will lead the centre and says data will be collected regularly so health experts are not waiting for statistics that are released every few months by the coroners service.

John Hedican says he wishes the Overdose Emergency Response Centre was around before his 26-year-old Ryan died from a fentanyl-laced heroin overdose.

“He was found unresponsive at his worksite during his lunch break,” he says. “While Ryan chose to try alcohol and later, drugs, he did not choose to be addicted to them. And our whole family experienced the horrendous lack of support this disease receives.”

“It was solely up to us to try and find help and pay for private recovery at two different facilities. Our system did very little to support a disease that affects more people than cancer,” he adds.

Money for the centre is coming from $322 million worth of funding promised by the provincial government in September under the new ministry of Mental Health and Addictions.

So far this year, more than 1,100 fatal overdoses have been recorded in BC.