Rural B.C. towns need province’s support amid spike in overdose calls: Fort Nelson mayor

FORT NELSON (NEWS 1130) — The impact of B.C.’s overdose crisis stretches far beyond the Lower Mainland, and one mayor is saying his community lacks healthcare and transportation for those who want treatment.

In Fort Nelson, paramedics responded to 20 calls in 2020.  That’s a 233 per cent increase from the two previous years, and a steep increase for a community that is home to fewer than 3,500 people.

Gary Foster is the mayor of the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality, which includes Fort Nelson. He says the correlation with the drastic jump in calls to respond to overdoses does correspond to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is not a coincidence.

“The pandemic came along and we’ve seen this spike so it stands to reason that it’s correlated. It may be people on their own, maybe out of work, and isolated,” he says.

Across the province, first responders were called to a record-breaking number of overdoses in 2020. The overdose crisis, linked to a poison drug supply, was declared a public health emergency in 2016. Since then, more than 5,000 people have died.

Foster notes while the pandemic has compounded the crisis, it did not cause it.

“This was with us long before COVID-19. It will be with us after COVID-19 is eventually taken care of, and it is a real concern for every community throughout British Columbia — including ours,” he tells NEWS 1130.

“I’ve attended funerals for people who have passed away from a drug overdose. It’s heartbreaking for the families. I’m sure everyone knows of somebody somewhere, who has overdosed.”

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He says while they have increased Naloxone training and availability in order to help efforts to reverse overdoses, there are no supervised consumption sites in the region, and the closest treatment centers are hours away.

“We don’t want to see it get any worse and you know we’re constantly looking at ways that we can reduce this crisis in our communities,” he says.

“We want to see people who want to get better get the treatment that they need, and it’s not available in smaller communities. More assistance, more health dollars allocated to small communities would definitely be a benefit.”

Foster points to a recent halting of flights into and out of Fort Nelson as a significant barrier for people who need to travel for medical care, and says effectively responding to any healthcare emergency in his district must include plans to make travel to nearby Fort St. John or Prince George more accessible. The challenges in accessing healthcare are wide-ranging, with travel required for cancer treatment, specialist appointments, and even optometrists and dentists.

He also warns that stereotypes and stigma about drug users can obscure how far-reaching this crisis actually is.

“People associate opioid addiction with Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It is throughout communities, and it’s not just the poor that are affected. It could be your pharmacist it could be your policeman, it could be your nurse that, you know, suffers from this.”