New scheme to halt heroin overdoses
Updated on 25 June 2009
A life-saving drug that reverses the effects of a heroin overdose is to be made available to the families and carers of injecting drug users in a nationwide trial.
Naloxone, a non-toxic drug which reverses the effects of heroin for long enough for medical help to arrive, has previously been used by the emergency services.
Now the National Treatment Agency has given the go-ahead to 16 sites in England to pilot a scheme in which the families and carers of drug addicts will be trained in how to give an emergency naloxone injection to keep a victim alive while awaiting help.
It follows pilot studies in Glasgow and London, which have shown that the drug is effective in saving lives.
Professor John Strang, director of the National Addictions Centre, King's Health Partners, said: "Naloxone saves lives. Most overdoses occur when friends or family are near at hand, and yet death can occur before the ambulance arrives. Family and friends must be trained as a new intervention workforce.
"If there is any possibility that someone in the family may be involved at any level with using heroin, then the family need to know what to do. No family should be without access to this essential resuscitation training and life-saving antidote."
But the scheme is not without its critics, some of whom argue that it could encourage reckless behaviour from addicts if they think they can be saved quickly.
The National Treatment Agency was set up in 2001 to improve the availability, capacity and effectiveness of treatment for drug misuse in England.
Barbara Lawrence is 54 and is taking part in the Naloxone pilot. She knows the devastation heroin can cause to a family, having lost her 19-year-old son Paul to an overdose 10 ten years ago.
"I do not want to bury another child," she said. "[The drug] is just another protection. Even if it never gets used, it is there."
