B.C. drug overdose crisis, deadliest of long career, says health officer
VICTORIA — Among the medical diplomas, certificates and degrees on Dr. Perry Kendall’s office wall is a framed copy of a newspaper with a headline that screams, “City Doctors Give Okay to Socialized Medicine.”
B.C.’s provincial health officer laughs at the mock front page of a Vancouver newspaper from 1951 that was given to him by his father-in-law, also a doctor.
The page is forward looking, similar to Kendall’s approach during a 45-year career in public health that started in free medical clinics in Toronto and Vancouver, and now sees him at the forefront of British Columbia’s overdose crisis.
The arrival of the powerful opioid fentanyl caused 914 overdose deaths in B.C. last year, almost 80 per cent higher than the 510 deaths recorded by the provincial coroner in 2015.