Administering naloxone, issuing rescue breath and supervising injections, are all close-contact work, which can be risky at the moment, according to Jade Boyd, a professor in the department of medicine at the University of British Columbia. “There is an increased risk of infection for diseases like COVID when you’re working in a high-contact space,” she said.

Since May 2020, a charity in Scotland has issued 187 naloxone kits — an emergency antidote for overdoses caused by heroin and other opioids. A “click-and-deliver” naloxone service has provided 187 take-home naloxone kits to people’s homes since the service began in May 2020, the charity offering the service has said.

Take-home Naloxone will be given to people at high risk of accidental overdoses, in a move designed to reduce the number of drug deaths. This will include those who have been resuscitated by the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) following an accidental overdose. The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) is handing out the kits, which can reduce the risk of a fatal overdose from opiates, in a programme funded by the Drug Deaths Taskforce.

New York City, like the rest of the country, is facing a historic overdose crisis driven by illicit fentanyl adulterating the unregulated drug supply and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the city’s health department has made naloxone, the overdose-reversal medication, available free-of-charge at chain pharmacies in highly impacted neighborhoods from which the city has historically divested.

A new study elevating the voices of opioid users who survived an overdose found that emergency department healthcare workers can best support the overdose patients by utilizing a patient-centered, non-judgmental approach, and by focusing on meeting their basic needs rather than on substance use treatment.

In this long read, George Charlton explains why “Drug Users” should know their place, and that place is firmly front and centre and at the heart of every treatment system and service across the UK.