Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis says Hastings Prince Edward Public Health and local services have done their best to reach out to help the vulnerable population but there is not just one solution.
Belleville police declared an overdose emergency Tuesday afternoon after emergency services responded to 13 overdoses in an hour.
Last fall there was a batch of bad drugs that resulted in 90 overdoses over the span of a week.
At that time, Hastings Prince Edward Public Health and partner services banded together to tackle the issue but Ellis says it’s a difficult task.
“We tried to get the message out but it’s hard to get that message out to the homeless or the non-house people that this is affecting.”
Ellis says they need more provincially-funded services.
“It goes back to services. And you look at the services which the province supplies, mental health, nurse practitioners. We just don’t have enough of that for rehabilitation. And the proper gold standard is housing first and wraparound services like I mentioned, and that doesn’t solve it totally but that’s the greatest success to house first.”
One person died in the rash of overdoses in November.
Police have not provided any information about whether there were any fatal incidents on Tuesday.
