Community members responding to an overdose with naloxone are more likely to seek emergency help when naloxone does not work or takes more time to work. Published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, the results show several factors associated with calling emergency services when helping someone with naloxone.
St. Paul’s Early Discharge Rule was derived to determine which patients could be safely discharged from the emergency department after a 1‐hour observation period following naloxone administration for opiate overdose. The rule suggested that patients could be safely discharged if they could mobilize as usual and had a normal oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, temperature, heart rate, and Glasgow Coma Scale score.
Release surveyed each of the 152 local authority areas in England, as local authorities are responsible for commissioning drug services, which give out take-home naloxone. The report includes findings on the availability of take-home naloxone across local authority areas, the scale of take-home naloxone supply in community settings, and coverage among people who use opiates and opiate clients in drug treatment.
The aim of this evaluation was to establish whether the current model of naloxone provision and training across all Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts in Northern Ireland is sufficient and to identify areas for development.
The supply of ‘Take Home Naloxone’ (THN) was initiated (pilot project) in 2009 as a harm reduction tool used to prevent fatal opioid poisonings, and has since been fully implemented across all health boards in Wales. This report provides data on the training and provision of THN kits from 49 registries across Wales recorded on the Harm Reduction Database Wales (HRD) during the period 1st April 2015 to 31st March 2016.
In recent years, there have been substantial increases in the number of people dying in the UK where illicit drugs are reported to be involved in their death. The largest increase has been in deaths related to the misuse of opioid substances; 2,677 opioid-related deaths were registered in the UK in 2015. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) therefore set up a dedicated working group to examine how to reduce drug-related deaths, with a focus on opioid-related deaths.
