2017 a deadly year on front line of Ottawa's opioid fight

As the number ofopioid-related deaths continues to rise across Ontario, Ottawa saw a particularly severespike last year, according to data from Public Health Ontario.

From January to October 2017, there were 53 opioid-relateddeaths in Ottawa, up from30 during the same 10-month period in 2016 a 76 per cent increase. (Data from November and December 2017 wasn't available.)

Province-wide,opioidrelated deaths jumped by 52 per cent fromJanuary toOctober 2017.

Ottawa's rapidly rising mortality rate is in part due toan increase in the number of opiate users, according to Anne Marie Hopkins of OttawaInner City Health.

The agency operates through a partnership between Ottawa's downtown homeless shelters, and is funded through the Champlain Local Health IntegrationNetwork.

"We have seen a massive increase in ... people using our services that identify as opiate users," Hopkins said.

That rising tide of clients coincideswithan influx ofmore toxicopioidssuch as fentanylin the city.

"We don't know why [Ottawa] is getting hit harder than other cities. We have no control over where the drugs are coming from," Hopkins said.

• Ottawa opioid deaths, 2014-2017

The province recently announced it will make a nasalspray version ofnaloxoneavailable for free at some pharmacies. An injectable version of the overdose-reversing drug had already been made available for free.

Deadly summer

According to Ottawa Inner City Health, the wave of opioid-relateddeaths last year began in the early spring and spiked in the summer, with 28 deaths between July and September.

Bylast Augustthenumber ofopioid-relateddeaths in 2017 had surpassed theprevious year's total.

It was a very, very hard summer on our staff.- Anne Marie Hopkins, Ottawa Inner City Health

"It was a very, very hard summer on our staff," Hopkins said."Some months we had 70 or 80 overdoses that we saw in the shelters."

In response, Ottawa Inner City Health began to implement new protocols to try to prevent overdose deaths.

"We started doing bed checks every 15 minutesso that we could check on our clients and make sure they were still breathing," Hopkins said.

Hopkins said since the opening of asafe injection site on Murray Street in early November2017, the agencyhasn't seen a single fatal overdose among its clients.

"That's a huge win for us," she said.

However the flow of dangerous drugs hasn't ceased, Hopkins said.

"We're still seeing all kinds of toxic drugs coming in," she said."It's still absolutely a challenge."