Province expands access to free naloxone kits

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This article was published 05/12/2019 (2290 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Life-saving medication that can reverse the effects of opioid overdoses has quietly been made more available in Manitoba.

The provincial health department has expanded access to free, take-home naloxone kits. While the kits were previously available to individual opioid users, now they’re free for users’ family and friends, as well.

The policy change puts Manitoba in line with other provinces, including Saskatchewan and British Columbia, that already distribute the kits to people who may witness an overdose.

Dr. Joss Reimer, medical director of population and public health with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said giving non-prescription naloxone to drug users themselves was initially seen as the most efficient way to make the overdose antidote available to those who are most at risk.

“Inclusion of family and friends is just meant to be one extra step and make it a little bit easier to make sure that there’s more naloxone in the community,” Reimer said Thursday.

“I think the commitment to harm reduction is what prompted the change. So we’re always looking at data and always looking at ways to improve our harm reduction programs, and this is a good next step that was consistent with what a lot of other provinces have done as well.”

Opioid users can’t self-administer the naloxone during an overdose, so the responsibility would likely fall to family or friends regardless. But Manitoba’s take-home naloxone program, which has been running since 2017, previously only allowed registered distribution sites — such as Street Connections, certain pharmacies and addictions treatment facilities — to give out the kits to users themselves.

Non-drug users who wanted the kits could buy them for roughly $50 each.

The cost was a barrier for some people, as was the requirement for individuals to disclose their drug use in order to get a free kit, said Bryce Koch, harm-reduction nurse with Project Safe Audience, an organization that distributes naloxone and trains people on how to use it.

“That can be quite stigmatizing — not everyone wants their drug history recorded and being told to the province. They want to be able to have access to this life-saving medication without having to disclose something that could potentially bring more stigma towards them,” Koch said.

More than 3,000 free naloxone kits have been given out since January 2019 at about 100 registered distribution sites provincewide, according to the Department of Health, Seniors and Active Living. The province didn’t publicly announce the policy change, which it says came into effect earlier this fall.

Arlene Last-Kolb, co-founder of Overdose Awareness Manitoba, has been lobbying for the change for about four years. She said she’s heard from families who couldn’t access the kits when they needed them most, and others who paid for their own kits and saved their children’s lives during drug overdoses. She’d now like to see local hospitals register as naloxone distribution locations.

“We are very, very, very happy for what’s happening, but as an advocate I do have to take it one more step further and just say we have to make sure this is given out at our emergency (departments),” Last-Kolb said.

Reimer said she would also like to see naloxone distribution “expanded to all emergency rooms and as many other sites as possible.”

People can get naloxone kits only after they’re trained how to use them. The training takes about 20 minutes and can only be offered in Manitoba by registered medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, paramedics and pharmacists. That requirement isn’t in place in all provinces and restricts access to naloxone, Koch said.

“People who use substances or people involved in peer organizations have the skills to be able to train people in naloxone, and they should be allowed to distribute these kits,” he said.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay