Grey Bruce Public Health is celebrating work being done locally for reducing the harms from opioid overdoses.
During their June 27th meeting, Public Health Specialist Dr. Chimere Okoronkwo shared the good news with the Board of Health.
“For the first quarter of 2025, from January to March, we reported 15 opioid-related poisonings and one fatality, in contrast to 46 opioid-related poisonings and 8 fatalities for the same period in 2024,” Okoronkwo shared.
Grey Bruce Public Health, in collaboration with front-line services, has an early warning system in place to alert the public through real-time information-sharing of emerging drug threats in the community. In the first quarter of 2024, 6 alerts were issued in Grey-Bruce. The first quarter of this year required no alerts.
The report also highlights the 2025 priorities for the Harm Reduction Team. These priorities are:
1. Enhancing community safety and reducing harms. The team hopes to accomplish this through providing education on services, such as participation in community outreach events, and supporting the distribution of rapid-response drug tests
2. Updating the Grey Bruce Opioid Response Plan. The team will accomplish this by collaborating with other health units as well as local community partners, to ensure that the response plan reflects current services and practices.
3. Reducing stigma. The team hopes to achieve this through evidence-informed education, training and communication by working with community partners and facilitating and evaluating various education materials that work to address stigma.
Public Health also participated in a rapid response drug test strip pilot in 2024 to distribute rapid response drug test strips for fentanyl, benzodiazepines, and xylazine and have continued to offer this service into 2025.
Drug-checking is a harm reduction strategy that provides community members with timely information they can use to lower their risk of drug poisoning when using substances from unregulated drug markets.
In 2024, the Harm Reduction Team participated in 13 community events, served more than 2,000 clients at 128 different outreach events, and provided 26 educational sessions to service providers and community members.
The team also distributed almost 5,600 Naloxone kits, in addition to training roughly 2,300 people to use them correctly.