Fentanyl goes missing from Victoria's Royal Jubilee Hospital

A recentFreedom of Informationrequest has revealed that alarge quantity of an addictive and potentially lethal painkiller disappeared from a hospital in Victoria.

The Vancouver Island Health Authority said the liquid product that went missing from Royal Jubilee Hospital in 2015 was a mixture offentanyl and anothermedicationsurgery patients receive to deal with pain.

The health authorityadmits the incident was one of the largest losses of fentanyl in its history.

"It's a meaningful amount of drug that was in these two products,and as a result there is concern as to where it did go, and the impact it might have based on where it went," said Richard Jones, Island Health's director of pharmacy services.

Few details are being released about the drugs' disappearance; the loss was only revealed when freelance journalist Stanley Tromp made anFOIrequest.

Island Health reported the loss to Health Canada as required but didn'tdisclose it publicly. Jones said it would be up to Health Canada to disclose the content of the report.

Some drug losses are a reality for any healthcare facility, Jones said, and the missingquantity offentanylis a small fraction ofthe hundreds of thousands of doses the health authority uses each year.

He said Island Health is working to re-educate staff on thesecurity of narcotics.

The health authority is not commenting on whether police are involved. Joneswouldn't speculate on whether the missing drugs ended up on the street.

With files from Megan Thomas