Opioid abuse hitting small cities hardest: report

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This article was published 12/12/2018 (2852 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The scourge of methamphetamine has raised alarm in Manitoba but an opioid crisis rages on in Canada, a new national report says.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) report shows that opioid poisoning hospitalization rates increased from 2013 to 2017. Across Canada, hospitalizations for opioid poisoning increased by eight per cent over the past five years.

Opioids such as fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine and codeine — even when prescribed legally — can lead to unexpected consequences, including addiction, poisoning and death.

The CIHI survey — Opioid-Related Harms in Canada — found that communities with populations between 50,000 and 99,999 were hit the hardest by the opioid poisoning, experiencing the highest per capita hospitalization rates in the country.

The opioid crisis was worse in Brandon — which had a 2016 census population of nearly 50,000 — than in Winnipeg.

In 2017, there were 12 significant opioid hospitalizations in Brandon, a rate of 23 per 100,000 population. In Winnipeg, there were 89 such hospitalizations in 2017 the same year, a rate of almost 12 per 100,000 population.

Across Canada, the fastest-growing rates of opioid-related hospitalizations and emergency department visits were seen among men between the ages of 25 and 44.

Hospitalization rates varied significantly among provinces; in Ontario and Alberta, emergency room visits from opioid poisoning increased by 73 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively.

The number of opioid hospitalizations in Manitoba from 2013 to 2017 fluctuated (127 in 2013, 145 in 2014, 124 in 2016 and 162 in 2017). Ontario and Alberta saw a steady increase over that five-year period. In Saskatchewan, there were 158 hospitalizations in 2013 compared to 244 in 2017.

Across Canada, CIHI’s analysis shows an overall decrease in opioid-related hospitalizations for the last three months of 2017 and the first three months of 2018, although it’s too early to know if the trend will continue, its report said.

The national health institute credits the recent reduction in opioid hospitalizations to initiatives such as new prescribing guidelines and monitoring programs, an increased number of supervised consumption and overdose prevention sites and the increased availability of naloxone to treat overdoses without a prescription.

Meanwhile in Manitoba, meth is driving a sharp increase in blood-borne diseases from needle-sharing. Winnipeg Regional Health Authority documents made public this week say public health officials have declared an outbreak of acute hepatitis B that’s almost exclusively linked to injection drug use. Hepatitis C is also on the rise among young people under the age of 25.

Winnipeg police have said that use of methampetamine, made in illegal labs using cheap, toxic ingredients that damage brain cells, is on the rise because it’s inexpensive. The Addictions Foundation of Manitoba says it can be smoked, taken in pill form or injected. Long-term use can cause intense feelings of rage, psychotic episodes, feelings of anxiousness, an inability to sleep and paranoia.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca