The Health 202: How a fringe idea to solve the opioid crisis turned mainstream (Washington Post)
Friday Apr 6th, 2018
The idea that a someone who's not a medical professional could reverse deadly drug overdoses by injecting victims with an antidote was once fringe. Now it’s widely accepted – and got even stronger backing yesterday with a rare announcement from the U.S. surgeon general.
Jerome Adams urged Americans to consider getting trained to administer naloxone, a drug used broadly by first responders that has proven highly effective in reversing opioid overdoses. The first advisory from a surgeon general in more than a decade – the last one, in 2005, was to warn pregnant women against imbibing – is the latest indication the Trump administration is trying to take on the opioid epidemic, which killed more than 42,000 people in 2016.
Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen said she is being forced to ration naloxone because the city doesn’t have the finances to buy as much as it needs. Wen said she’d prefer the federal government to either negotiate lower prices with naloxone manufacturers or help local jurisdictions pay for the drug.
“Every week we count the doses we have left and make hard decisions about who will receive the medication and who will have to go without,” Wen said.