A "huge spike" in local opioid-related deaths — an overdose death rate that's double the Ontario average — is one of the disturbing findings of a health unit report that is spurring officials to quickly collaborate on a plan of action.
Updated: March 3, 2017
Dr. Wajid Ahmed, Associate Medical Officer of Health , is pictured in this July 2015 file photo. Jason Kryk / Windsor Star
A “huge spike” in local opioid-related deaths — an overdose death rate that’s double the Ontario average — is one of the disturbing findings of a
health unit report
that is spurring officials to quickly collaborate on a plan of action.
“The gravity of the situation, it’s prompting us to move faster,” the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit’s associate medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed said Thursday, expressing hope that a coalition of local police, paramedics, hospitals and health unit officials will devise “strong recommendations and actions to help our community,” in the next few months.
The report, released Thursday, speaks to a tripling of opioid-caused emergency department visits between 2003 and 2015, and a near-tripling of opioid overdose deaths in just eight years between 2007 and 2015. The rate of overdose deaths for Windsor-Essex per 100,000 population was 10.7 in 2015, which is double the Ontario rate of 5.1.
The rate of opioid-related deaths in Windsor-Essex County (WEC) and Ontario (2007-2015). Courtesy of Windsor-Essex County Health Unit / Windsor Star
The opioids include codeine, fentanyl, heroin, hydromorphone, methadone, morphine and oxycodone, according to the report, which doesn’t say which narcotic in this list of prescription and street drugs is doing most of the damage.
But Dr. Tony Hammer, a local physician who specializes in addictions, says heroin is not a dominant drug here. “In fact it’s fairly scarce. Here, it’s oxycodone, either in Percocet or OxyContin, and fentanyl, both the prescribed fentanyl and the thin edge of the wedge is the (recent) arrival of the Chinese fentanyl.”
He said no one can definitively say why this area has such high use of opioids, but he speculates there are two reasons: the large number of manufacturing jobs here where people get injured and then become addicted to prescribed painkillers; and an efficient criminal distribution system that makes the drugs easily available.
“It’s devastating to individuals and their families,” he said, adding that opiate addiction fuels crime, including violent crime.
Distribution and density of opioid-related emergency department visits in Windsor and Leamington based on the patient’s postal code (2013-2015). Courtesy of Windsor-Essex County Health Unit / Windsor Star
A map in the report, plotting the postal codes of people visiting hospital emergencies for opioid-related problems, shows that downtown Windsor and central Leamington are opioid hotbeds. Curiously, of the 43 overdose deaths in 2015, the majority, 24, were in Essex County, with 19 in Windsor.
Dr. Ahmed said one reason for this is perhaps the longer time it takes for paramedics to arrive at an overdose in the county and transport the patient to hospital.
Other findings include:
A breakdown of emergency visits based on age shows the vast majority are either 20 to 29 or 30 to 34, where the local numbers are much higher than the provincial rates. The local rates for seniors were significantly lower than the provincial rates.
The emergency department visits for people living downtown was 35.7 visits per 10,000 population, more than triple the average rate for Windsor-Essex County.
Men visited the emergency at almost double the rate of women for opioid-related reasons.
Among patients in the government’s Ontario Drug Benefit Program, Windsor-Essex County ranked seventh out of 49 counties when it comes to opioid use. The only jurisdictions worse than Essex were several counties in the north, Brant County and the Niagara Region.
Opioid-related emergency department visits increased from 32 per 100,000 population in 2003 to 123 in 2015 for Windsor-Essex men, and from 20 to 66 for women, rates which are both higher than provincial rates.
“In our community we have seen a huge spike, which is definitely a concern, so we need to take action,” Dr. Ahmed said.