From cbc.ca
Mayors across Canada, including Kitchener's Berry Vrbanovic, are asking for a national strategy to tackle Canada's growing opioid crisis and they're calling on the federal government to start now.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Big City Mayors' Caucus released recommendations Thursday asking for the federal government to immediately create goals and timelines to achieve those goals in order to reduce opioid overdoses and deaths.
"This is a public health crisis and ... we need to work collaboratively to tackle it, so we came up with a series of recommendations," said Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic in an interview with CBC K-W's Craig Norris on The Morning Edition on Friday. Vrbanovic is one of 13 mayors on the opioid task force, headed up by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson.
The recommendations include tracking numbers of overdoses and deaths, expanding treatment options like opioid substitution therapy, and reducing delays to getting treatment, as well as increasing access to supportive housing.
Other recommendations include eliminating barriers for people seeking help during an overdose, expanding drug testing technologies for fentanyl and opioids.
On Wednesday, the Ontario government released numbers up to July 1, 2016, showing rates of overdoses and overdose deaths in the province, sortable by local health networks. Overall, the number of opioid deaths in the first half of 2016 jumped 11 percent over 2015.
On Thursday, Michael Parkinson with the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council told CBC News early data he had indicated that overdose deaths in the region had again increased in the first half of 2017.
Police suspect opioids are tied to 31 deaths so far, including three in May alone.
Read more here