Pubdate: Tue, 11 Aug 2015
Source: Kamloops This Week (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Kamloops This Week
Contact:  http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1271

NALOXONE KITS A FRESH APPROACH

In the past 17 months, the work undertaken by Dr. Ian Mitchell and
public-health nurse Kirsten McLaughlin at Royal Inland Hospital has
saved three lives - and perhaps more.

The duo's commitment in distributing medical kits designed to reverse
the effects of an opiate drug overdose is a prime example of what the
focus of Canada's health-care system should be.

It is a proactive, preventive attack, rather than a reactive stance
that fails to address the root problem and which costs society far
more - in terms of lives and dollars.

Mitchell and McLaughlin hand out naloxone kits and teach addicts how
to properly inject the drug that has, quite literally, brought people
back from the dead.

With the rash of dealers adding deadly amounts of fentanyl to all
manner of drugs - including marijuana - the number of fentanyl-related
deaths and overdoses has risen this summer.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate 50 to 100 times more potent than
morphine.

Another aspect of the work being done by Mitchell and McLauhglin and
the staff at RIH is that it is a harm-reduction initiative.

In other words, drug use - and the dangers that come with it - is
treated from a health-based, harm-reduction viewpoint, rather than
from a criminal-code mindset.

Treating drug use and the those ensnared in its talons as a criminal
manner has proven to be a futile approach that tends to simply add
bodies to jail cells while doing little to attack the real issue.

Look south of the 49th parallel for ample proof of the absurdity of
such an outdated stance.

There is much to be learned from the work being done out of RIH - the
first hospital in Canada to dispense such kits from its ER - and from
the offices of other health-related agencies in Kamloops.
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MAP posted-by: Matt