Article content continued

Photo by Matt Smith / SASwp

After reading a CBC news report in November about six opioid-related deaths in four weeks involving fentanyl-laced cocaine in Saskatoon, six College of Pharmacy students decided to steer the non-profit group they created in the spring toward providing test strips to pharmacies and other health services providers, who would then offer the strips to the public.

“Saskatoon has never seen anything like it,” third-year pharmacy student Shayan Shirazi said.

The students wanted to do something relevant to the community and incorporate pharmacists and other accessible health-care practitioners into harm reduction, he said.

They plan to have the test strips available to the public by September at the latest. The strips are used to detect the presence of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs in other substances.

Right now, this is the primary focus of the student group, called Minimizing the Opioid Crisis.

Shirazi cited the results of a Johns Hopkins University report that indicated the test strips, out of all of the technologies that were tested as part of a study, had the highest sensitivity to fentanyl.

Health Canada cautions that fentanyl test strips have limitations — they’re not specifically designed to check street drugs before consumption. It recommends that anyone who uses opioids or other drugs have naloxone on hand, noting that the most accurate way to test drugs for the presence of fentanyl is to go to a safe consumption site.