Naloxone deliveries still short: community groups

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This article was published 10/07/2023 (834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One month after a supply issue cut down access to naloxone across Manitoba, some organizations say deliveries of the life-saving medication have yet to return to normal.

Shipments from Manitoba Health to distribution sites slowed in May, caused by a “brief supply issue resulting in a delay on the shipping for some orders,” the province said at the time. A Manitoba spokesperson said the issue would be resolved by mid-June.

However, in some of the most vulnerable communities, harm reduction groups say they’re still receiving a reduced supply, and it isn’t nearly enough to meet the need.

Naloxone is a medication designed to reverse an opioid overdose.

“Even still, we’ll order 100 kits of naloxone, and we’re lucky if we get half of that in our order,” Manitoba Harm Reduction Network’s Thompson co-ordinator Jessie Horodecki said Monday.

Meantime, a provincial spokesperson said Monday there are no outstanding orders and there are currently 12,000 kits on hand in the provincial warehouse to ship out.

Horodecki said she continues to receive orders, but they have significantly fewer kits than expected. She has had to have excess kits from MHRN’s Winnipeg branch shipped to Thompson.

Demand for naloxone in Thompson and the surrounding northern communities has only increased, she said, attributing the shift to fewer barriers to accessibility and a rise in drug use and drug poisoning.

“We had very low numbers for naloxone in the past, like 150 (kits) would last us more than a year. But now it’s not lasting us a full quarter,” she said.

The Northern Health Region is second only to Winnipeg for the most substance-related fatalities per 100,000 people in the province.

A letter to provincial leadership last month from the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network and signed by more than 150 organizations and individuals demanded distribution to rural, remote and northern areas be prioritized.

It also calls on leadership to prevent future supply issues by expanding the inventory the naloxone program keeps, building a partnership with community groups to provide input on the program, and providing more transparency if supply stoppages do occur.

When asked if Health Minister Audrey Gordon had read the letter, a government spokesperson said the province had ordered more than 23,000 kits in 2023, compared to 28,750 in the entirety of 2022.

“Manitoba’s naloxone program currently offers more naloxone in take-home kits (four doses) than any other program in the country, and provides up to two kits per person (up to eight doses per person) in direct response to the emergence of highly potent opioids, such as carfentanil,” the spokesperson said in an email Monday.

“Take-home naloxone is intended to be an interim tool for Manitobans to respond to an instance of opioid toxicity while awaiting EMS to arrive. Complex drug toxicities require medical management.”

Lingering impacts of the supply disruption aren’t just being felt in rural areas. Last week, Resource Assistance for Youth director of grants and information Breda Vosters said deliveries have become inconsistent and Winnipeg groups that were used to receiving regular monthly shipments are seeing a piecemeal response from the province.

“What’s been happening is Main Street Project will receive a stockpile, and then they’ll give a bunch out to the other places that don’t have any, and then another place will receive some a couple of weeks later, and they’ll have to give a bunch out to other places who don’t have any, and then we’ll receive some, and we have to give a bunch out,” she said.

“It’s not consistently being provided still. So we’re having to divide up the resources, and it’s far less than what we used to be getting.”

In Winnipeg, there were 309 calls to paramedics that resulted in naloxone being used on a patient in June, and 319 in May.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca