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More than 100 overdoses Police killed in Baton reversed in past year NALOXONE AN EFFECTIVE TOOL AS FENTANYL OVERDOSES RISE
Photo by SUSAN ZIELISNKI/Advocate staff
Tricia Hogan is one of the nurses at Turning Point who has been educating clients about naloxone for the last 12 months.
BY SUSAN ZIELISNKI ADVOCATE STAFF Turning Point has been saving lives with takehome naloxone kits for just over one year with 130 known opioid overdoses reversed. On July 7, 2015, Turning Point (formerly Central Alberta AIDS Network) was one of eight agencies in Alberta to prescribe naloxone, train people to use the free injection kits, and distribute kits when the province first made them available in response to the rise in fentanyl overdoses. Fentanyl has been showing up unexpectedly in other street drugs and at about 100 times stronger than morphine, even small amounts of fentanyl can be deadly. Now several pharmacies in Red Deer and across Central Alberta are making the kits available without a prescription. Some walk-in clinics also provide kits. As of last week, Turning Point had given out 574 kits to those at risk of overdosing and concerned friends and family. Last month, they handed out an average of three kits per day. Jennifer Vanderschaeghe, Turning Point executive director, said now the province is looking at
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BATON ROUGE, La. — Three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers investigating a report of a man with an assault rifle were killed Sunday, less than two weeks after a black man was fatally shot by police here in a confrontation that sparked nightly protests that reverberated nationwide. Three other officers were wounded, one critically. Police said the gunman was killed at the scene. Although he was believed to be the only person who fired at officers, authorities said they were unsure whether he had some kind of help. “We are not ready to say he acted alone,” state police spokesman Major Doug Cain said. Two “persons of interests” were detained in the nearby town of Addis. A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation identified the shooter as Gavin Long, a 29-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, man. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. Kansas City police, some with guns drawn, converged on a house listed as Long’s. The University of Alabama issued a statement saying that Long attended classes for one semester in spring of 2012. School spokesman Chris Bryant said university police had no interactions with him. One witness described a gunman who was wearing all black and carrying extra clips of ammunition. The races of the suspect and the officers were not immediately known. The shooting — which took place just before 9 a.m., less than a mile from police headquarters — came amid escalating tensions across the country between the black community and police. Just days earlier, one of the slain officers posted an emotional Facebook message about the challenges of police work in the current environment. It was the fourth high-profile deadly encounter in the United States involving police over the past two weeks. In all, the violence has cost the lives of eight officers, including those in Baton Rouge, and two civilians and sparked a national debate over race and policing. President Barack Obama urged Americans to tamp down inflammatory words and actions. “We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies attacks on law enforcement,” Obama said in remarks from the White House. “Everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country rather than divide it further.” Authorities initially believed that other assailants might be at large, but hours later said that no other active shooters were on the loose. They did not discuss the gunman’s motive or any relationship to the wider police conflicts. The shooting began at a gas station on Airline Highway. According to radio traffic, Baton Rouge police answered a report of a man with an assault rifle and were met by gunfire. For several long minutes, they did not know where it was coming from. The radio exchanges were made public Sunday by the website Broadcastify. Nearly 2 ½ minutes after the first report of an officer getting shot, an officer on the scene is heard saying police do not know the shooter’s location. Almost six minutes pass after the first shots are reported before police say they have determined the shooter’s location. About 30 seconds later, someone says shots are still being fired. The recording lasts about 17 minutes and includes urgent calls for an armoured personnel carrier called a BearCat. The officers who were shot worked for the Baton Rouge Police Department and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.
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making naloxone nasal spray available. “For sure it’s really exciting. If Alberta Health chooses to make them available, and funds them for use in our program, that would be spectacular,” Vanderschaeghe said. “The spray itself is substantially more expensive, but is way easier to use and because it’s way easier to use, more people are likely to use it.” Another way to help save lives is for the federal government to pass the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act to provide immunity for drug possession to anyone who seeks medical or police assistance for themselves or another person following an overdose. Naloxone, which is injected intramuscularly, keeps people breathing until paramedics arrive. It’s possible for a person to lapse into an overdose again once naloxone wears off so medical attention is required. She said often people don’t want to call 911 because police may put people under arrest. “(The role of police) in that room is to do security for EMS. What we know is they often do their other job which is to arrest people and detain people so it’s causing people to not call 911. “That policy and that practice is causing substantial health issues.”
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