Prepare to face the fentanyl

QMI agency

Monday, 28 August, 2017 21:47

UPDATE
Monday, 28 August, 2017 21:52

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MONTREAL | overdose, believed to be related to fentanyl are more frequent in Montreal, but the police still refuses to speak of a crisis.

“The word’ crisis ‘ would be too strong. However, we can say that the police service, it is concerned by the situation. There has been an increase in overdoses,” said Christine Christie, commanding officer at Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM).

The SPVM refuses to talk about a crisis of fentanyl in Montreal, even if the number of overdoses that have occurred since the beginning of the month of April worried about the authorities.

“The level of fentanyl, among the 113 cases [of overdoses], we had 10 cases or fentanyl has been detected. And among the 10 cases or fentanyl has been detected, we have had three instances where, unfortunately, there have been deaths,” added the commander Christie.

“It is sure that there are a number of concerns, in the sense that we don’t want that. The environment is ready, it is clear, there is no problem. We have a plan of action that will be filed on this issue”, said the minister of Health, Gaétan Barrette.

Plan of action required

A cross-departmental action plan must be filed on an urgent basis and has requested the president of Cactus Montreal, one of the three injection sites supervised.

“It takes our action plan interdepartmental dependency, which is planned for the fall, but I think it’s press. Yes, it is surely much better prepared, but there is still a lot of things to do. He’s not fool ourselves, the fentanyl, there is an alarming situation at the level of consumption of opioids,” said Louis Letellier.

The other issue, according to stakeholders, is to make more accessible the Naloxone, considered as the antidote to an overdose of fentanyl, an opioid forty times more potent than heroin.

For now, the SPVM does not train its officers to administer the antidote. “However, what I can say is that it is a folder, which is in constant evolution,” said Mrs. Christie.

As for the two deaths that occurred last week in Montreal, it is still impossible for the POLICE to confirm the exact cause of death. The police, however, has confirmed that opioids were found inside the vehicle.