City of Vancouver says overdose numbers in March likely to surpass February totals

Vancouver officials are again raising concerns about the opioid overdose crisis, saying the March overdose toll will likely be worse than last month.

The city said Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services responded to 104 overdose calls during the week of March 13, and police reported 21 suspected fatal overdoses by March 20, compared with 25 in all of February.

The B.C. Coroners Service reported last week that 102 people across the province died of illicit drug overdoses last month, up 72.9 per cent from February 2016.

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"The trend and toll that it's taken is heartbreaking, but unfortunately it's not surprising," said Mary Clare Zak, the city's managing director for social policy.

Mayor Gregor Robertson said in a statement that the city's first-responders and front-line workers are at a breaking pointand other levels of government need to help.

"Vancouver Coastal Health's Mobile Medical Unit at 58 Hastings has saved hundreds of lives with invaluable emergency care and treatment-on-demand over the last several months, but will soon be shutting its doors," he wrote.

"We desperately need the B.C. government to spend the recently received $10 million from the federal government to combat the fentanyl crisis to broaden access to clean prescription drugs, substitution therapy, and treatment-on-demand to help bring relief to our first responders who are working tirelessly to save lives from drug overdoses."

Current injection programslimited

Prescription heroin has been pointed to as a potential fix for the fentanyl overdose crisis that has been ravaging the Downtown Eastsideand affecting people across the province.

About 130 patients are enrolled at a program atProvidence Health Care's Crosstown Clinic in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, which givesthemdaily doses of injectable hydromorphone, an opioidused as a replacement for drugs like heroin.

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While the federal government amended regulations allowing doctors to prescribe heroin in September 2016, B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake said earlier this year that there aren't yet enough capable physicians in place to scale up the program.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said they are "currently examining what additional resources will have the greatest impact on saving lives, to determine next steps in the provincial response to the overdose crisis and how new funding from the province and the federal government can be best allocated over the coming weeks."

Zak is hoping change comes soon.

"The federal government needs to make it easier for this to happen, and the provincial government needs to step up and provide the funding," she said.

"This is what we need to do.This is what needs to happen, and [they need] to put the systems in place to make it so."

With files from The Canadian Press and Brenna Rose