With prescription drug abuse on the rise in Thunder Bay, drug strategy officials want to put anti-overdose medication in the hands of those who need it most.
Patty Hajdu, Thunder Bay’s drug-strategy co-ordinator, on Monday said providing the opiate reversal drug naloxone to users and their families will save lives.
According to figures provided by Superior North Emergency Medical Service, paramedics have officially responded to and recorded 230 known drug overdose cases in 2011. But the number is likely 1,000 more, at the very least, officials said.
The City of Toronto in late August began handing out opiate-reversal kits, an idea Hajdu would eventually like to see included in Thunder Bay’s drug strategy plan.
The take-home kits include injectable doses of naloxone, which can be shot into any muscle, a staple of emergency rooms across North American for years.
Effective programs have been set up in larger North American centres such as Boston, San Francisco and New York, and the drug is also used at a prominent needle exchanges in Vancouver and Edmonton. The drug is also used to treat overdose patients in Europe.
Naloxone, also known as NarCan, can counter the effects of several different opiates, including heroin, OxyContin and morphine.
Implementing the program would require an education program for recipients and their families, said Hajdu, who works at the Thunder Bay District Health Unit which operates the Superior Points Harm Reduction program, the city’s only needle-exchange program.
She's not looking for a free-for-all policy.
“The idea is not that you administer it freely in the community, but that it’s targeted and it ends up in the hands of people who are in an opiate-using community, whether they’re substance users, or people who are being prescribed opiates that may not be aware of the risk of opiate overdoses,” Hadju said.
A recent study shows that among Ontario Drug Benefit Plan recipients, Thunder Bay has the highest rate of opiate prescriptions in the province and the second-highest rate of overdoses. The numbers translate to the remainder of the population, she said.
“We know anecdotally and qualitatively that this is a problem that’s been affecting our community for quite some time,” Hajdu said.
It’s a plan not without a cost, and would likely need a corporate sponsor, public donations or a change of policy at the provincial level – or some combination of the three – to make it work. Drugs like naloxone are not covered under the public health mandate.
“It wouldn’t be covered by the province, but it would something that if we were sincere as a drug-strategy steering committee or implementation panel, (we’d ask) how do we support this, if in fact we go that route?” Hajdu said.
Norm Gale, chief of SNEMS, said paramedics in Thunder Bay have administered the drug 25 times since January 2010.
But while he prefers not to wade into the take-home kits debate, Gale did say paramedics are trained to recognize and deal with opiate overdoses, and response times for priority calls like these are between six and 10 minutes.
“The idea is that if someone is found in that condition, people need to call 911 right away and there will be a rapid EMS response. We consider it a genuine emergency,” Gale said.
“The drug clearly is helpful, but our paramedics administer it under the license of a physician, and our paramedics have specific training in recognizing the situation and administering the medications. So they do it safely.”
Each dose administered by paramedics must also be reviewed.
