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CITY 10
John Ashbridge honoured ENTERTAINMENT 15
Uptown Live! hits right notes SPORTS 34
THINGS TO DO THIS WEEKEND
Big B.C. Games haul for locals
LOCAL NEWS – LOCAL MATTERS
THURSDAY JULY 26, 2018
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NewWestRecord.ca N E W S P A P E R
CELEBRATING CULTURE: Members of the local Tatar community gathered at Queen’s Park on Sunday for the Sabantuy festival, celebrating the rich history of these Turkic-speaking people living in the central regions of the European part of Russia. At left, Gulya Birkine, left, Fatima Issa, centre, and Alfiya Garipova, right, took part in a game of tug-of-war. Top: Issa, left, helps a youngster in a game in which people carry water without spilling. Above: Six-year-old Hamza Abdulkhalikov, centre, reacts during the tug-of-war. PHOTOS JENNIFER GAUTHIER
Overdose deaths doubled in New Westminster
City will receive as much as $100,000 in provincial government funding to form a plan to address the crisis Lauren Boothby editorial@newwestrecord.ca
With 24 illicit drug overdose deaths in 2017, New West is not immune from the crisis sweeping the country. According to data from the B.C. Coroners Service, the number of overdose deaths last year (24) is more than double the number of deaths in 2016 (10).There were 12 deaths in 2015, nine in 2014, five in 2013 and three in 2012.
To deal with the crisis, New West will receive as much as $100,000 to create a working group to assess the city’s available addiction- and overdose-related resources and to create a plan to prevent overdose deaths and support those with addictions through treatment and recovery. The city’s newly formed Community Action Team – a group of front-line community agencies, city representatives, experts and those with “lived experience” of
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drug addictions – has submitted a grant application to access the province’s new Community Overdose Crisis Innovation Fund and is waiting for approval. New West is one of 20 B.C. communities identified by the provincial government this year as urgently needing to improve the response to drug overdoses. Dr. Aamir Bharmal, medical health officer with Fraser Health, says reducing the stigma surrounding drug use is a big part of
what the group hopes to do. “We recognize that stigma kills and is one of the big factors to the overdose crisis,” he told the Record. “Our goal is to really work on decreasing a lot of the stigma.” According to Bharmal, the large majority of overdoses occur when people are using alone at home, and improving the support network of people with addictions may reduce the number of deaths. Much of the work will also focus on coordinating the existing
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resources and facilities in New West. “There are a lot of treatment resources that are already in place. We also do have a lot of very engaged non-profit organizations that are (in New West) too,” he said. “I think it’s really being able to identify what are the strengths already in the community and being able to build on those, but also identify where are some of those gaps, and how can we all work better together.”
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