Like many cities in North America, Vancouver has found itself deeply affected by the opioid epidemic, with the Vancouver firefighters’ annual overdose calls reaching 5,000 in 2018, according to an article in The Globe and Mail. To help prevent recurrences, the City has formed a new unit called the Combined Overdose Response Team. This team looks to pair members of Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services and Vancouver Coastal Health, for the purpose of following up with people involved in recent overdoses and providing people with the services they may need to address their addiction. Working off lists of calls for previous overdoses, the Combined Overdose Response Team sends members to incident locations, with the intent of offering patients additional support – from naloxone kits, or access to treatment or counseling.
Individually, both organizations have been regular respondents to overdose events, with firefighters often getting the call out for immediate treatment, and VCH looking to provide assistance for those brought into emergency departments. Both have been limited, however, in the types of support they’ve traditionally been able to provide, based on access to patients or available resources.
“It’s intensely frustrating when someone is struggling so badly and we can’t do any more,” Jonathan Gormick, a captain with Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services (VFRS) told The Globe and Mail. “The services are there – they’re obviously not accessing them – but that’s the limit of what we can do.”
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