A rise in suspected unintentional overdose visits to some of the region’s hospitals has been alarming enough for health officials to issue an alert.
The Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit has released data showing opioid and other drug-related overdoses have been on the rise in recent weeks.
While the data doesn’t pinpoint one drug specifically, Dr. Lisa Simon, the health unit's associate medical officer of health, tells BarrieToday that it only deals with unintentional overdoses.
“Any situation where someone tried to harm themselves intentionally is not on this information,” she said. “This is information is from an analysis of people who come in and before they are diagnosed by a doctor. But all the cases in this graph are for unintentional overdoses only.”
The data includes all patients 10 years of age and older visiting participating Simcoe Muskoka hospitals. The participating hospitals are the Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare (Bracebridge and Huntsville locations), Georgian Bay General Hospital in Midland, Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, and Collingwood General and Marine Hospital.
During the week of Nov. 3, 2019, the number of visits for unintentional overdoes was 20 and even dipped to 16 on the week of Dec. 8. The week of Feb. 2 of this year saw it spike to 35 and the week after was slightly lower at 31.
Simon says an alert has been made every week since Jan. 26, 2020 with hopes that agencies will be monitoring the situation closely.
“We’re at what we call a yellow phase, which is where we don’t need to alarm the public with a statement, but we are sending an alert to those centres who would deal directly with at-risk people,” she said.
“The main takeaway here is there is a problem," Simon added. "We are monitoring it the best we can.”
Over a seven-week average, there have been 22.3 visits weekly that dealt with the unintentional overdoses.
The data includes any mention of opioid and other drug overdoses from methadone, fentanyl, codeine, morphine, hydromorphone, hydromorph, carfentanil, dilaudid, heroin, oxycodone, opium, percocet and opioids. It also includes mentions of non-drug specific overdose, excluding alcohol-related or other specific non-opioid drug mentions.
