The U.S. Surgeon General’s recent public health advisory — urging more Americans to carry naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses — was a rarity, something that hasn’t happened in more than a decade.
But for Hoosiers who remember Dr. Jerome Adams’ actions as Indiana’s state health commissioner, faced with an unprecedented outbreak of HIV in rural Scott County, the call wasn’t unexpected.
“When it came out, I wasn’t surprised,” says Robin Vida, director of health education at the St. Joseph County Health Department. “I said, ‘yep, you go, Dr. Adams’ …”
Vida says that Adams was “always such a champion” for county public health departments battling a growing opioid problem.
She recalls his approval of a standing order for naloxone, making it easier for individuals to obtain the medication.
It was Adams who persuaded then-Gov. Mike Pence to allow Indiana to create syringe exchanges to contain the spread of HIV after an outbreak of the virus made national headlines.
Needle exchange programs, which allow drug users to swap dirty needles for clean ones, “save lives, both by preventing the spread of diseases like HIV and hepatitis C and by connecting people to treatment that can put them on a path to recovery,” he wrote in a blog post last year.
In an advisory issued earlier this month in his role as the nation’s top doctor, Adams urged Americans to start carrying naloxone to help combat the nation’s opioid crisis.
Speaking at the National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta on April 5, he issued his office’s first national public health advisory in 13 years. He said he hopes those who are at risk — as well as their friends and family members — will keep the antidote on hand and learn how to use it.
Vida is encouraged by the advisory and says most overdose deaths occur in a home and the challenge is to “find a way to get that naloxone there.”
Vida says administering the drug is “super easy” and it’s 100 percent safe, that “it’s not going to hurt you if you’re not overdosing.”
Adams, who once acknowledged the “moral and ethical concerns” about needle ex change programs, saysnal oxone isn’t a quick fix and doesn’t enable addicts: “It’s important that we use naloxone as a bridge to definitive treatment and long-term recovery.”
And that means saving lives in order to get to that bridge.
This was distributed by the Hoosier State Press Association. Send comments to [email protected].
