By Greg Fry

Death Review Panel on overdoses releases recommendations

Apr 5, 2018 | 11:28 AM

KAMLOOPS — A Death Review Panel investigating all illicit drug overdose deaths in B.C. over a 19-month period released its report today including a list of recommendations to government.

The BC Coroners Service Death Review Panel: A Review of Illicit Drug Overdoses examined all overdose deaths from Jan. 1, 2016 to July 31, 2017.

The panel identified three areas of focus towards reducing illicit overdose deaths in B.C.:

1. The need to provincially regulate and appropriately oversee treatment and recovery programs and facilities to ensure that they provide evidence-based quality care, and that outcomes are closely monitored and evaluated;
2. The need to expand access to evidence-based addictions care across the continuum, including improved opioid agonist therapies and injectable opioid agonist therapies access;
3. The need to improve safer drug-use, through the creation of accessible provincial drug checking services using validated technologies.

The panel included 21 experts from health care, policing, corrections, First Nations, education, and mental health and addictions.

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Panel Chair Michael Egilson says the review found the biggest challenge in tackling the issue is “the recent increase in drug toxicity.”

“In particular, the potency and content of illicit substances is unpredictable; this is why we’re advocating for access to safer drug use, including opioid agonist therapy, tools like drug checking and Take Home Naloxone kits, as well as evidence-based treatment and recovery system of care.”

Click here to read the full report and to see the complete list of recommendations.

Along with today’s report, the BC Coroners Service released the illicit drug overdose death statistics to the end of February 2018.

It found there were 102 suspected illicit drug overdose deaths in February, a 16 per cent decrease over the the number of deaths in February 2017 and a 19 per cent decrease over the number of deaths occurring in January 2018 (126).

The average number of illicit overdose deaths in February is 3.6 deaths per day.