Get bad dope alerts
Sara Young, Regional Leader, Mental Health & Substance Use, wants the new RADAR project on your radar. “We desperately need to find a better way to quickly get messages out about bad batches of drugs so that people can take added precautions, and prevent overdosing – and we hope this new service will help.”
VCH Harm Reduction and BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) staff launched the Real-time Drug Alert & Response (RADAR) system this summer. Anyone in the VCH region, such as people who use illegal substances and frontline health care staff, can anonymously report overdoses that show unusual symptoms. This info will be relayed to Harm Reduction staff immediately and they in turn will send out a warning about contaminated drugs.
Rebecca Thomas, former Research Assistant for the project and now Project Coordinator, says, “This new system can help frontline staff anticipate bad batches of drugs, and the side effects (eg. difficult overdose presentations). It can also allow staff to warn their clients about the dangers of the specific drug.”
Report bad dope
Text “bad dope” to (236) 999-DOPE (3673) or fill in the form at www.vch.ca/overdose.
Get drug contamination alerts
If you’d like to receive drug contamination alerts, text “alert” to (236) 999-DOPE (3673).
In the video below, Sara demonstrates how to enter information via the new texting service.
Reports in real time
Currently, data from several sources, such as BC Emergency Health Services, emergency departments, Insite, and overdose prevention sites, is analyzed to find any anomalies in overdoses, which could signal a contaminated batch of drugs on the street. The information is then forwarded to harm reduction service providers to communicate to people who use drugs but these alerts often lag one to two weeks behind the data. This new service will allow the alerts to get out the same or next day.
Please pass this info along to relevant clients, colleagues, and other providers you may work with.
More info
For details about this read the news release.
For more info about the overdose crisis including where to get a naloxone kit visit www.vch.ca/overdose.
Concerned
What about people that use drugs on the social scene and do not consider themselves addcits or frequent users? A huge percentage of overdoses are from the younger age groups using “recreational drugs” and would not be in contact with a harm reduction site. It only takes the one time they try it , to die!!!!
Two of my neighbours have lost children (both under 20 years of age) who took drugs while out at parties so getting message out there and trying to stop them from would be a more proactive approach.for the younger age groups.
Tiffany Akins
That’s horrible to hear about your neighbour.
In VCH, the majority of overdoses are occurring in those aged 19 to 39 years (58%). Though of course we have services and health messages for everyone. Most info about overdoses can be found at http://www.vch.ca/overdose. There are specific resources for youth, and parents and caregivers. We have also connected with schools and police departments to talk about youth and substance use and prevention and harm reduction.
The RADAR service is for anyone to use, regardless of age or substance usage frequency.