Despite Mounting Death Toll, Alberta Still Won’t Declare a Public Health Emergency over Fentanyl

September 8, 2016, 11:58am

The Alberta government stated Wednesday that it still will not be declaring a public health emergency over fentanyl. Despite urging from Liberal leader Dr. David Swann, Associate Health Minister Brandy Payne said in an interview that the province is standing its ground on refusing to label its opioid crisis as an official emergency.

In 2015, there were 274 fentanyl-related overdose deaths in Alberta, up over 76 percent from the previous year. And as of the end of June, there have been 153 fatalities due to the deadly opioid, which is many times more potent than heroin, so far this year in the province.

“What we’re doing in Alberta isn’t working,” Swann said. “We’re doing too little, too late. We don’t have a real-time number of deaths.” So far, the numbers from this year show a slight increase in fentanyl-related overdose deaths from the previous year. However, Alberta Health released numbers today that show that distribution of the opioid overdose antidote naloxone has nearly tripled in the province and has been used in hundreds of overdoses, saving lives.

“We just don’t feel that it’s appropriate when responding to a serious addictions and mental health issue,” Payne said. “It’s an issue of addiction, and our government is choosing to focus on treatment, whether that be through detox beds or opioid dependency treatment.”

But in the neighbouring province of BC, where fentanyl killed 200 people in three months, the provincial government declared a public health emergency—the first of its kind in history—back in April.

“Public health legislation between the two jurisdictions is certainly not different enough to explain why one would declare an emergency while the other refuses to,” Dr. Hakique Virani, an addictions and public health specialist in Edmonton, told VICE. “The risk of this hazard to human health and the present mortality burden reached emergency proportions long ago in both jurisdictions… If you’re asking me to explain why BC declared an emergency while Alberta won’t, I don’t have an answer.”

Payne said that declaring a state of emergency requires “extraordinary powers” and is more appropriate for cases of “highly communicable” disease outbreaks.

For Dr. Hakique Virani, an addictions and public health specialist in Edmonton, Alberta’s inaction continues to be a disappointment.

“Those reasons are nonsense,” Virani said. “Dinner tables have more empty seats around them every day because of this opioid problem… The rationale the ministry provides about why a public health emergency will not be declared is frustrating and frightening.”

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