Canada

British Columbia's chief coroner Lisa Lapointe says she's a hopeful person, but she is leaving her office frustrated and disappointed. Angry, even, with drug overdose deaths expected to hit record levels this year.

The B.C. Coroners Service issued a public safety warning Wednesday, citing increases in overdose deaths "above earlier indications," when 189 deaths were reported in October.

Lapointe has been at the forefront of the province's battle against toxic drug overdoses for years, but she said the public health emergency that was declared in April 2016 never received a "a co-ordinated response commensurate with the size of this crisis."

Instead, she lamented a "one-off, beds and projects" response to the emergency that the B.C. Coroners Service says has claimed more than 13,000 lives in the past 7½ years.

"We see these ad hoc announcements but sadly what we haven't seen is a thoughtful, evidence-based, data-driven plan for how we are going to reduce the number of deaths in our province," Lapointe said in an interview Monday.

Lapointe, who retires in February, said she was particularly worried about what she feared was the creep of politics into vital public health decisions surrounding overdose policies.