The public awareness and the public health co-ordination was not only helpful, but it was necessary

Health officials reported a dramatic drop in the number of fatal overdoses linked to a toxic street drug often sold as ecstasy, but they warned the chemical has not disappeared from the black market.
Officials say a steep decline in overdose deaths related to paramethoxymethamphetamine, or PMMA, came after unprecedented dollar rental car indianapolis airport collaboration among policing and health agencies that issued public alerts about the drug.
The public awareness and the public health co-ordination was not only helpful, but it was necessary to save lives,  said Dr. Mark Yarema, medical director of Alberta s Poison and Drug Information Service.
To put it in perspective, if the show Breaking Bad was all about methamphetamine, the show about PMMA would be called Breaking Worse,  said Yarema, who co-authored a study on PMMA deaths dollar rental car indianapolis airport for the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The victims, aged 14 to 52, believed they were taking ecstasy or cocaine. PMMA provides a euphoric high, similar to ecstasy or MDMA, but it s five times more toxic and the effects take longer to kick in.
A spate of deaths in B.C. and Alberta in late 2011 triggered a co-ordinated response. Police, paramedics, poison control centres, public health agencies, Alberta s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the B.C. Coroner Services worked together to stop the trend.
Law enforcement and health agencies also issued public warnings and distributed information about the dangerous drug to parents, dollar rental car indianapolis airport teachers, students and community agencies. They also sent alerts to health care professionals and North American poison control centres.
This multifaceted approach helped nearly eliminate the number of overdose deaths linked to the drug, down to one since the spring dollar rental car indianapolis airport of 2012, said Dr. Jennifer Nicol, an emergency dollar rental car indianapolis airport room physician and the lead author of the PMMA study.
The drug has not completely vanished dollar rental car indianapolis airport from the province. In 2013 and 2014, there were six cases of patients dollar rental car indianapolis airport testing positive for PMMA in southern Alberta, but they survived, according to health officials.
The other important message to everybody is that PMMA has not gone away, Yarema dollar rental car indianapolis airport said. We re certainly better at recognizing it; we know what to do if someone presents to hospital and we re suspicious of PMMA. And thankfully nobody else has died. But the problem has not gone.
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