Photo: Jonathan Weiss / dreamstime.com

By Shaun Penner

Opioid Crisis

Grande Prairie sees record 33 opioid overdose deaths in 2020

Mar 23, 2021 | 11:08 AM

New figures from the Alberta government show four people in Grande Prairie died of an opioid overdose in December 2020, adding to the highest-ever recorded yearly total of opioid-related deaths in the Swan City, totalling 33 for all of last year.

Across Alberta, opioid fatalities also set a record, after 1,128 deaths were recorded last year. In 2019, Alberta recorded 623 deaths linked to an opioid overdose.

The 33 deaths recorded in Grande Prairie are the most since opioid overdose statistics began being recorded in Alberta in 2016. The previous high was set in 2017, when 31 overdose fatalities were recorded in the Swan City.

There were 26 deaths from an opioid overdose in Grande Prairie in both 2018 and 2019.

For 2020, all but two of the recorded deaths in Grande Prairie were linked to non-pharmaceutical opioids, such as fentanyl and its analogues, as well as heroin.

In the North Zone there were 86 deaths from an opioid overdose in 2020, after a total of five were recorded in December (including the four in Grande Prairie). That set the fatality rate in the North Zone at 25.3 per 100,000 person years.

Grande Prairie recorded the third highest fatality rate among the province’s urban municipalities in 2020 at 43.8 per 100,000, only below Lethbridge (48.5 per 100,000 – 48 total deaths) and Red Deer (44.3 per 100,000 – 49 total deaths).

Provincial statistics show that 76.6 per cent of those who died from an opioid poisoning in 2020 were men. The stats also show the most deaths in Alberta came from males aged 35 to 39 (145 fatalities), followed by males aged 30 to 34 (134) and males aged 25 to 29 (129).

Those aged 25 to 29 contributed the most to the death toll among women (46), followed by women aged 45 to 49 and 30 to 34 (both with 39).

The province said Tuesday that about 70 per cent of overdose deaths in Alberta in 2020 occurred in a private residence.

With that, the provincial government unveiled a new app aimed at curbing the rise in overdose deaths in private homes.

The Digital Overdose Response System (DORS) app was unveiled Tuesday morning, which if initiated, will trigger a call to the STARS emergency centre if an individual using opioids while alone is not responsive to a timer. At that point, an emergency response will be dispatched to the users home in the event of a presumed overdose.

“We know that most people who fatally overdose in Alberta, do so in a private home,” said Jason Luan, Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions in Alberta. “Among the first of its kind in Canada, the DORS app will help prevent opioid and other substance-related deaths by those using alone at home.

The app will be piloted this summer in Calgary, before it is expected to expand to other communities by next year.

More details on the pilot program can be found here.