Family doctors being trained to screen addiction in B.C. during opioid crisis
VANCOUVER — A tag hanging from a dead man’s left toe says the cause of death was an overdose of fentanyl, “unknowingly taken with other drugs.”
The cadaver draped in a white sheet is displayed in transit ads funded by the Vancouver Police Foundation and represents 922 people who died in British Columbia from drug overdoses last year alone.
A spiralling number of deaths, often involving the painkiller fentanyl, prompted the provincial government to declare a public health emergency on April 14, 2016, and to launch its own awareness campaign on TV, radio, Facebook, transit and at bars and restaurants.
The province rolled out its latest campaign this week, featuring Facebook ads about a mother whose son died of an overdose, users who say they struggled with the shame of addiction until they got treatment, and the importance of carrying naloxone, a medication used to reverse overdoses.