Overdose deaths between April and June rose by about 11 percent compared with the previous two quarters.
“This still represents a kind of leveling-off in opioid-related fatalities over the last three quarters,” said Kendra Viner, manager of the Philadelphia Health Department’s opioid surveillance program. “The bad news is that we’re not seeing the decline in fatalities we’d really like to see. And if this trend continues, we’ll probably end 2018 with maybe just under the total number of fatalities that we saw in 2017.”
By Aubrey Whelan
The Collected Works of Jim Garrow 