By Dylana Milobar

Local health care professionals explore opioid hospitalization rates in Kamloops

Dec 13, 2018 | 4:28 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops has recently been included in a list of cities with some of the highest opioid related hospitalization rates. 

The Canadian Institute for Health Information released the data, which shows in B.C cities with a population between 50,000 and 99,999 residents, Kamloops was ranked in the top five. 

These numbers highlight what health care professionals already have seen first-hand, now the question remains: Why?

With 47 opioid-related hospitalizations in 2017, Kamloops is ranked fourth in B.C, behind Surrey, Kelowna, and Nanaimo. 

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“So what we’re hoping is that policy makers and front line staff will use this information to track progress and see if their initiatives and strategies are working,” explains Krista Louie, CIHI’s Manager of Opioid Reporting, “and also to bring attention to the issue.”

Louie says in communities with a population between 50,000 and 99,999, rates of hospitalizations due to opioid poisonings were found to be higher than larger communities with 500,000 residents. 

“What our report does is it looks at the ‘what’. So it does describe the communities, the rates in the communities. What it doesn’t look at is the ‘Why?’.”

However, physicians working in these mid-sized communities, like Dr. Ian Mitchell with the Royal Inland Hospital Emergency Department, have an idea why.

“I would have to say likely that there’s less services available in the smaller areas,” Dr. Mitchell explains. “So big cities, the Downtown East Side, has a multitude of services available. And I think there’s been less services available in these smaller communities.”

In 2017, more than half of opioid poisoning hospitalizations in Canada were due to accidental causes, while almost one third were intentional. 

Dr. Mitchell says it’s not just street users the epidemic has impacted, doctors have found that most overdoses or poisonings are men between the ages of 30 and 50.

“Who are often manual labourers, often have been injured on the job. That’s how they got their start on opiates. As we cracked down on opiates, making them less available, now they’re turning to street,” he explains. “Those are the people that are using on their own and dying on their own. Because an opioid overdose is very easy to fix, if there’s people around you.”

Dr. Mandy Manak is a Medical Director with the Interior Chemical Dependency Office, and thinks unless there are changes to the health care system, the rates of hospitalization will continue to go up.

“Especially since we’re one of the few health authorities that don’t have an in-patient service for actually dealing with people when they come through emergency,” she says. “So a lot of hospitals, including Kelowna, they just got one, they have an in-patient liaison service, so that when somebody comes in, they are seen by a physician and treated right away.”

Many doctors agree that overdose prevention strategy needs to be more wide spread, and go to the root of the problem. 

“You know, we’re trying to treat one class of drugs, and addiction is about treating the illness of addiction, not just one class of drugs,” Dr. Manak explains.

“I think sometimes, I know in Interior Health and certainly in Kamloops, we are under-utilizing the addiction clinics that are available for opiate use disorder. And if people are being channelled into injection sites, then perhaps we are missing some of those that can actually be retained into treatment.”

Over the past five years, there has been a 27 per cent increase Canada-wide in opioid poisoning hospitalizations, growing alongside fentanyl-related deaths.