Drug recovery centre calls for change as wait list grows at facility
Posted February 8, 2019 12:19 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
NEW WESTMINSTER (NEWS 1130) – As the overdose crisis shows no sign of improving in British Columbia, the wait list at at least one drug recovery centre in the Lower Mainland is so long it’s estimated to take up to seven weeks for someone to be admitted.
Giuseppe Ganci with the Last Door Recovery Society in New Westminster explains the wait can wreck a person’s drive to get help.
“By the this time next week comes, I’m probably going to be high again, and this whole feeling of despair, this whole feeling of wanting to change will be gone,” he described some people as feeling. “That’s just the cycle of addiction, and that’s happening to a lot of British Columbians right now.”
Ganci says health authorities need funding from the government to be able to offer those in need the help they are looking for.
“I think it would be great if agencies had the opportunity to, when someone asks for help, we can give them treatment right on demand,” he explained, adding the facilities would try to stabilize the people walking through their doors for a few days to get them by.
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His concerns are being raised just one day after B.C.’s Coroners Service and top doctor released new figures outlining the death toll province-wide from illicit substances.
According to the Coroners Service, nearly 1,500 people fatally overdosed in 2018, despite multiple efforts to deal with the opioid crisis.
The numbers hit another all-time high, with the 1,489 deaths last year from illicit drug overdose marking more than deaths from suicide, homicide, and motor vehicles combined.
In response to the latest figures and since drug regulation is federal, Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry said on Thursday that the province is getting creative to help curb the number of losses.
“Our federal minister of health has supported development of safer drug supply for people who have addictions and are dependent on the toxic street drug supply,” she said. “But they are not at this moment looking at changing the Criminal Code.”
B.C.’s provincial health officer declared a public health emergency in April 2016 in response to the rise in drug overdoses and deaths.
-With files from the Canadian Press
