Calgary fire department sees 20 per cent increase in opioid calls
Posted Aug 17, 2018 7:14 am.
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Calgary’s Fire Chief says his department is doing okay, despite a rising number of calls dealing with opioid overdoses.
Steve Dongworth tells CityNews, they saw a 20 per cent increase in opioid-related calls in July, compared to the same month in 2017, and that on average one person a day is now administered the anti-overdose drug Naloxone by fire crews.
“We feel we’re well prepared. Obviously, if the call volume continues to increase on these, we may need to think about you know, ‘are we well enough resourced to deal with this?’, but at the moment we’re managing this,” he said.
Dongworth says 45 per cent of fire department calls are medical in nature, or 28,000 a year.
He hopes preventative programs from different levels of government will start to curb the opioid crisis in the city.
