Global Affairs: Canada (wk #2)
In response to an article "Interactive map of overdose deaths brings opioid crisis to your doorstep."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/opioid-deaths-map-1.4067384
By Malone Mullin, CBC News, Posted: Apr 15, 2017
A man walks past a mural by street artist Smokey D. about the fentanyl and opioid overdose crisis, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, B.C. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
Christine Padaric, after losing her 17 year old son Austin, to a morphine overdose in 2013 , has teamed up with Jeremiah Lindemann, the software developer who created an interactive map that puts faces and stories to the crisis of opioid drug overdoses. Christine, Austin's mother, now educates young people about harm reduction in Waterloo, Ontario. Found the map last year through a friend. Originally the map was mainly for the U.S. but now there is a combined OD Map of North America. And Lindemann has been working with Padaric to promote the map in Canada. The new template is cleaner, easier to navigate and now allows families and friends to contribute lost loved ones to the map themselves.
Both Padaric and Lindemann think the map has a noble purpose: banishing the shame associated with addiction and humanising people who use drugs. Lindemann thinks the map brings a North-America wide problem to the doorstep of whoever sees it, and personalized the crisis. "People are inclined to pay attention if it's closer to where they live," he said. And Padaric admits it also helps her deal with her own grief over the death of her son Austin.
The crisis in Canada is getting worse all the time.
There were 922 opioid overdose deaths in B.C. alone last year, and more than 340 from just fentanyl in Alberta, but no nationwide database exists yet that consistently tracks such deaths since the process for investigating overdose deaths by police and coroners differs from province to province. Paul Sajan, who manages prescription drug abuse data at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) stated. ”It's virtually impossible to say, across the country, what 'opioid-related death' actually means.” And he also said it’s “One of the biggest information gaps with statistics across Canada.”
Neil Seeman, who works with health data as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Toronto, states. “The opioid deaths map reveals that substance use doesn't discriminate when it comes to age, location or economic class, addiction is often misunderstood as afflicting those who bring it upon themselves," he said. "But this [map] makes it clear that this is an epidemic that ... affects a broad cross-section of society."
Hearing a bunch of numbers, and statistics in an age full information can go in one ear and out the other. And we all have filters that we run that information through. This initiative puts real people, faces, places and backgrounds to the statistics. It is also helping to bring something into the light that needs to be addressed. When an evil stays 'taboo' or hidden, it can take whatever shape or characteristics that we put to it, it's in the dark, left to our imagination. But when an evil (in this case), is brought into the light, it can be defined, assessed, named and a strategy for defeating it can be established. It loses some of it's power over people. I commend the courage of those who have lost loved ones to drug overdose, and dare to share, to fight the stigma and shame that can, and has, surrounded this issue.
