Opioid Overdose Hospital Admissions Up 62% In Scarborough
There were 107 opioid-related hospital admissions in 2018.
The number of hospital admissions in Scarborough for opioid overdoses has increased by 62% between 2014 and 2018.
The York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust registered 66 admissions in 2014, compared to 107 in 2018.
2015 saw 88 admissions, 2016 77, and 2017 saw 99.
When a Freedom of Information request was made for the data, 2019 was not complete and therefore full data was unavailable for that year. However, there were at least 66 admissions for the first 10 months of the yea (January-October 2019 inclusive).
The NHS defines an opioid as “strong medicines used to control pain when weaker pain killers have not been effective.” These include the prescription drugs codeine, tramadol, morphine, fentanyl and oxycodone.
Why did students choose this topic?
We chose this topic because over the years there has been an increase in drug misuse in our area. This is important to us because the young people in our community have been heavily affected by the rise in antisocial behaviour and it is making them feel unsafe.
How did the answers make our journalists feel?
The answers we got back didn’t shock us, but opened our eyes to the reality that this issue has, over the four years of data we have, become more and more prominent.