FALL RIVER — The number people who died of an opioid-related overdose in Fall River remained stubbornly flat last year, according to statistics provided by the Fall River Opioid Task Force.
According to task force co-chairperson and Fall River EMS Deputy Director Beth Faunce, 54 people died of an opioid overdose in Fall River in 2018, the same number as died in the city of a fatal opioid overdose in 2017.
Fatal opioid-related overdoses fell 16 percent in 2017, Faunce said.
Those numbers reflect the most recent information the task force received Wednesday from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, said Faunce.
Last year, Fall River police and emergency medical services treated 810 people for opioid overdoses, both fatal and non-fatal, representing an 11 percent decrease compared to 2017.
Faunce said that while she is heartened to see fatal opioid overdoses did not increase in 2018, “of course, we’d like to see it decrease, and that’s our goal for this year.”
This year’s numbers appear to be moving in the right direction. One person died of an opioid overdose in the city last month, compared to four people who died of the same cause in January 2018, and six people who fatally overdosed on opioids in 2017.
“The fact that the deaths are going down means that they’re getting that Narcan quicker, and it’s saving lives,” said Niki Fontaine, coordinator of Fall River Opioid Task Force.
Statewide, opiate overdose deaths fell 4 percent in 2018, after falling 2 percent the year before, according to the state Department of Public Health.
Fentanyl remains a "key factor" in opioid overdoses in Massachusetts, according to the Department of Public Health. The synthetic opioid was present in 89 percent of people who died of an opioid-related overdose and whose toxicology was done in the third quarter of 2018.
Fontaine reviews each police and EMS call in the city to identify opioid overdoses.
After an opioid overdose, an outreach team visits the person’s home to connect them and their family with services to aid in recovery, she said.
“People that we’ve gone to their homes made that initial connection, and we connect them to mental health, detox whatever it is, so we connected 47 percent of the total opiate overdose to services last year,” said Fontaine.
A police officer accompanies the outreach team, a protocol that Faunce said has shown officers another way to help those with addiction besides arresting them.
“It brought them into the mindset that there’s other things besides arresting people,” she said.
The direct outreach is funded by a Bureau of Substance Abuse Services grant awarded to Seven Hills Behavioral Health, said Fontaine.
“We put a lot of effort and time into it so we make sure that nobody falls through the cracks,” said Faunce.