Yukon getting federal help to study opioid abuse

The federal government is sending a public health officer to help analyze opioid use in the Yukon. The Public Health Agency of Canada says the deployment comes at the request of the territory.

The personnot yet namedis expected to arrive by the end of October, and will spend six months working out of the office of Yukon's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Brendan Hanley.

Hanley says the public health officer will focus on providing a more detailed pictureof opioid use and overuse in the territory. There have been similar deployments to other Canadian jurisdictions, he says.

The Yukon Coroner'sService confirmed last spring that there had been five deaths in the territoryover the previous year related to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. One emergency room doctor in Whitehorse has called it an "opioid crisis" in Yukon.

According toHanley, the visiting health officer willhelp bringtogether information from a number of different sources, such asemergency department and hospital visits, the drug information system, and the chief coroner.

He says the focus will be on developing "a more systematic way" of working together.

• Yukon doctors urge tough response to fentanyl 'crisis'

• Yukon RCMP confirm their first seizure of fentanyl in territory

'Going pretty much full steam'

With the federal help, Hanley says Yukon will be "able to get analysis to a greater depth than we are able to produce at the moment."

The goal of that analysis is tohelp inform things like overdose prevention strategies and addictions treatment.

According to the federal government, the public health officer will be named in the upcoming weeks.

Hanley says he's happy to have the federal support.

"We have been going pretty much full steam over the summer months in a number of areas to look at what we can do better," he says. "There's still work to be done, but I think we've made substantial progress."

He highlights the awareness that resulted from the broad roll-out of take-home naloxone kits, as well as the opioid working group that is developing new guidelines for treating addiction.

"We've certainly had tragedies with fentanyl and I expect we will have more," saidHanley.

"But I think the future is looking better for how we are able to address addictions and opioid use in general."

• Opioid poisonings land 16 Canadians in hospital each day on average, 53% jump over 10 years