The head of a Windsor, Ont., hospital says she is shocked by a spate of what appear to be drug-related deaths over a 24-hour period last weekend.
“It is a significant escalation in our issue,” Janice Kaffer, president and CEO of Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, said in an interview. “We’ve been battling addiction issues in Windsor for some time. This is extremely alarming to me.”
The Windsor Police Service said Monday four people had died over the weekend in medical emergencies and, while it was too early to confirm the cause of death, “there is a possibility that each case involved the use of illicit drugs while the subject was in a private place."
Initially, police reported five deaths, but the statement said that, “as a result of timely and effective medical intervention, one subject survived a potential drug overdose.”
In 2017, 36 people died of opioid-related causes in the Windsor region, a rate of 8.7 per 100,000 people, according to information provided by Public Health Ontario. The death rate in Windsor, a city of about 250,000, was similar to the provincial average for 2017, which was 8.9 opioid-related deaths per 100,000 people.
Ms. Kaffer noted that while fentanyl is a problem in Windsor, so is crystal meth. She said she’s waiting to hear more details from Windsor police and paramedics about the events that unfolded over the weekend.
“We don’t want to speculate too far ahead of what the data will tell us. It could very well be that they were fentanyl-[related deaths]. It could very well be that they weren’t.”
Brandon Bailey, a member of the Overdose Prevention Society of Windsor, said the deaths highlight the city’s urgent need for a supervised drug-consumption site.
“It’s definitely devastating,” he said, adding that he likely knows some of the people who died of drug overdoses.
There is no supervised consumption site in Windsor. Health experts say such sites are critically important because they provide a safe place for people to use drugs and receive emergency care in the event of an overdose. They also help connect people to treatment services and some basic medical care. Last month, the Ontario government said it would allow supervised drug-use sites to remain open, but is capping the number, leading to fears that hard-hit communities, such as Windsor and elsewhere, will never get a site.
“We can save these lives. We just need to work together,” Mr. Bailey said.
Earlier this month, the Overdose Prevention Society of Windsor set up a mock supervised drug-use site, which had harm-reduction kits, a needle exchange and naloxone available to reverse overdoses, but did not allow people to use drugs on site. The purpose was to educate the community and also provide a safe place for people who use drugs, Mr. Bailey said.
“Drug users are human beings," he said. "They need to be treated as human beings.”
The site closed down Sunday night at the request of the owner of the property on which it was located.
Carly Weeks