Pubdate: Sun, 09 Jul 2000
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2000 David Syme & Co Ltd
Contact:  250 Spencer Street, Melbourne, 3000, Australia
Website: http://www.theage.com.au/
Author: Paul Heinrichs

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINE OF THE UNWINNABLE WAR

Ballarat ambulance officer Phil Gribble remembers the old days when motor 
accidents occupied so much of his time.

Today, they're way down in number, but people have found another reason to 
require his services urgently.

Ballarat, he says, can have as many as 12 heroin overdoses a week in summer 
and in school holidays.

Schoolchildren as young as 15, he says, are among those he has to revive 
from overdoses. They sometimes used heroin at home when their parents were 
away.

"Five or six years ago, for someone to have heroin overdose, the guys would 
talk about it at work. Now, it doesn't even rate a mention. In the last 
five years, it's just exponential growth," he says.

Users in Ballarat include the well-off as well as those bumping along the 
bottom of society.

"If it keeps going the way it is, it will be a major problem for the 
ambulance services just responding to it. Even now, we're going to have to 
alter our rosters. Often it's late afternoons, and so they have to cater 
for that. If it keeps going the way it is, it will certainly reach the 
level of heart attacks."

Mr Gribble says the overdose victims generally recover quickly with large 
doses of the drug Narcan. Most just walk away rather than go to hospital, 
making him think the service needed to switch to a less capital-intensive 
operation than a fully equipped ambulance.

As for the anecdotal accounts of cranky addicts abusing ambulance officers 
for spoiling their fun, Gribble says that's only 5 per cent.

"I think they all know someone who's died, and they're pretty happy to be 
pulled through. They're fine and away they go."

The Rural Ambulance spokesman, Paul Bird, says the Geelong, Ballarat, 
Bendigo areas average three to four overdoses a week. It was only one a 
week in the Gippsland area.

In Bendigo, he said, the MICA paramedics might do one a week, then the next 
four overdoses in six hours. "There have been a couple of incidents where 
we've had two narcotic overdoses from the same address two hours apart. 
First mum, then dad, and the kids are still at home."

Another case, he said , involved resuscitating a woman in her 20s one 
evening. The next morning she took another overdose and died.

"There was one 18 months ago who went unconscious on the train out of 
Melbourne as it went through Kilmore. The train was stopped and we sent a 
crew to revive that patient."
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