Public Health Sudbury and Districts (PHSD) has prepared a motion called Sounding The Alarm that describes the current crisis in opioid overdoses and calls for action by exploring the idea of a coalition of Northern Ontario health units to investigate strategies since the Sudbury jurisdiction currently has the highest opioid death rate in Ontario.

The motion on the table is discussed as a possible course of action that might be approved by the PHSD Board of Health, which is scheduled to meet this Thursday, May 20.

The current opioid crisis is one of the key items on the agenda, especially since recently released figures show that the rate of deaths attributed to opioid overdoses in the PHSD jurisdiction nearly doubled in 2020 when compared to the number of overdose deaths in 2019.

The statistics gathered by PHSD showed that 105 people died in the PHSD jurisdiction in 2020, nearly double the death rate of 56 people, who succumbed to overdoses in 2019 in the Sudbury area. In 2018, that number was only 32 deaths.

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