Hugh Lampkin says he abused drugs — everything from pot to PCP — for decades. He started at about age 12 in Toronto.
Now in his late 50s, he’s an overdose survivor who has beaten back his demons. But his past has taken a toll on his body, leaving his back bent at an impossible angle, and surgery out of reach.
Lampkin has lost count of the friends he’s lost to overdoses and organ failure.
The opioid crisis has claimed more than 13,000 lives in his province since 2016. On Nov. 1, the B.C. Coroners Service confirmed another 175 suspected deaths in September. That’s 10 per cent less than died in Sept. 2022, but still 5.8 drug deaths per day, with most deaths reported in Vancouver, Surrey and Greater Victoria.
Of the 225,000 British Columbians using unregulated substances, fewer than 5,000 receive safe supply prescriptions, according to provincial data.
Opioid overdoses have claimed 38,514 lives in Canada in the past seven years, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. Many others survive, like Lampkin, but are left with injuries or chronic health issues that then hinder their rehabilitation.
Medical experts say those problems need more study and those people need more support. Today the B.C. Coroners death review panel urged the government to expand safer supply access to save lives and prevent injuries.
According to data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information, some 5,807 overdoses were recorded at Canadian hospitals (not including Quebec) between April 2022 and March 2023.
Of those, 327 suffered anoxic brain injury, meaning their brain was damaged due to a lack of oxygen. Anoxic brain injury is just one of the ailments that can affect overdose survivors. Statistics on the others are scarce.
It’s not clear if Lampkin has a brain injury. He says his memory isn’t what it was, and his once-long stride is now an agonizing shuffle along an East Hastings Street sidewalk in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
About a year and a half ago, a fall bent his spine almost 90 degrees.
“We were stacking some boxes one day and I fell off — and when I went to stand back up I couldn’t stand up straight and it’s been there ever since,” he said.
Scan the sidewalks that border the Downtown Eastside and it’s common to see residents with contorted spines, walkers and wheelchairs. Brian Conway, director of Vancouver’s Infectious Disease Centre, says there are 500 or more hospitalizations per day across Canada as a result of overdoses and many more involving infections that can be introduced where an injection pierces the skin that can then spread to the blood, heart, brain or bones.
Two men are seen on East Hastings Street in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on July 25. It’s common to see area residents with contorted spines, walkers and wheelchairs. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
“The health-care system, currently designed, is failing the inner city,” said Conway.
“There are more people that need more help in a different way.”
These include a need for more monitoring and research of drug harms, especially as people age.
“There are many consequences well beyond, unfortunately, dying,” Conway said.
“If infection spreads to the bones, causing osteomyelitis” — a serious bacterial infection — “this will cause the bones to collapse so that people will have collapsed spines; not be able to stand up straight, not be able to walk properly.”
Organ damage, paralysis
Conway says opioid abuse can also lead to chronic health issues and damage to the heart, liver or pancreas.
Infections can spread through the bloodstream and cause abscesses and damage that can lead to mobility issues or even stroke or paralysis. In severe cases the mechanisms and glandular systems that help grow bone become damaged, and bones become decalcified, crack or even collapse.
Why a safer supply is needed to combat B.C.’s drug crisis
Featured VideoWith British Columbia facing its deadliest year for drug-related deaths, chief coroner Lisa Lapointe talks to Ian Hanomansing about why a safe supply of drugs is needed to curb the steep rise in toxic drug-related deaths.
Conway works at the Vancouver Urban Health Centre on Main Street, where he offers medical care for people often failed by traditional hospitals.
Research around the effects of opioid damage and how that impacts rehabilitation is also lacking, according to Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Ma.
Volkow says too little is understood about effects of multiple anoxic brain injuries — or how they could affect memory in old age.
“Does overdosing, particularly with multiple overdoses, increase your risk for dementia? And I predict it will,” Volkow said.
And Volkow says new dangers are spiking right now in the U.S. where a non-addictive drug called Xylazine (often referred to as “Tranq”) — which affects the vascular system and blood vessels — is often found combined with opioids like fentanyl. Volkow says these so-called Tranq cocktails often cause aggressive lesions that, if not treated properly, end in amputations.
‘Tranq’ ups risk of amputations
“This is a rising problem that we’re actually right now seeing in the United States. We are seeing it accelerate because of the presence of a new drug that is being used to lace fentanyl,” said Volkow.
A man sits with his dog while city employees work to dismantle tents along East Hastings in the DTES neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
The mechanisms of why Xylazine causes such aggressive lesions, are not yet clear, Volkow told CBC News.
Xylazine is showing up in small amounts in Vancouver, according to the dashboard that logs drug testing for the BC Centre on Substance Abuse.
Volkow says the weakening of the skeletal system and osteoporosis are more common problems; made worse because spinal surgery, like organ transplants, are rarely offered to long-time drug users.
Cecil Creighton is pictured at The Portland Hotel at 20 W Hastings St in Vancouver, British Columbia on Thursday, April 27, 2023. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
“Those are extraordinarily complex surgeries in the best of circumstances… the spinal cord is not an easy place to do surgery,” Volkow said.
‘I’ve learned to live’
For Lampkin, the three-block walk from his apartment to his job at the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users is excruciating.
“I try to use the walker because it’s kind of painful and it tires me out quite a bit,” he said.
By the time a specialist told Lampkin that he would not be considered for spinal surgery, due to past drug use, he’d been shuffling around — bent almost in half — for more than a year and a half.
Long before his fall, a previous infection in his neck vertebrae had spread into his spine.For now he’s doing physio and trying to fix himself, by walking as much as he can. He says he used drugs as a kid for “comfort” to escape memories of abuse he suffered after a stranger abducted him as a child, derailing dreams he had of becoming an engineer.
“It was always popping in my head,” Lampkin says. “My life wasn’t the life that I picked,” he said. “Some days I don’t feel so good. But that’s life, right? I’ve learned to live.”
Lampkin says his memory isn’t what it was, and his once-long stride is now an agonizing shuffle. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
