RICHMOND, Va. — Kaléo, a privately-held pharmaceutical company, today announced that 250,000 EVZIO (naloxone HCl injection) Auto-injectors have been donated since launching the kaléo Cares Product Donation Program in October 2014.
More than 250 first responder agencies, public health departments and qualifying non-profit community groups across 35 states, have received donated EVZIO Auto-injectors through kaléo’s charitable program. More than 3,600 lives have been reported saved with the help of EVZIO Auto-injectors, an average of approximately 26 lives saved per week, since the start of the program.
The 250,000th EVZIO Auto-injector was donated earlier this month to the Connecticut Department of Health. “Like so many other states across the country, Connecticut is experiencing the terrible effects of opioid addiction and overdose. We are grateful for the donation of EVZIO Auto-injectors to aid in our efforts to help save lives,” said Governor Dannel P. Malloy of the State of Connecticut.
Kaléo, an innovative pharmaceutical company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, was founded by identical twin brothers with life-threatening conditions. From their initial concept of a compact auto-injector with innovative features, all the way to FDA approval, it took years of hard work and many millions of dollars invested in research and development. Kaléo is proud to have more than 100 domestic and international issued patents and FDA approvals for three products in the last four years. Kaléo’s products have all been internally developed and are manufactured in the United States in custom state-of-the-art robotic assembly processes with more than 100 quality checks run on every product.
EVZIO was the first naloxone product specifically designed, FDA approved and labeled for the emergency treatment of opioid overdose by individuals without medical training. It is the first and only intelligent naloxone auto-injector with voice and visual guidance.
“We have been fortunate enough to have received several donations of EVZIO from kaléo since 2015,” said Eliza Wheeler, of the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education (DOPE) Project, a program of the Harm Reduction Coalition in San Francisco, California. “To date, our trained participants have used EVZIO nearly 500 times to reverse opioid overdoses experienced by their peers.”
EVZIO was designed to be prescribed by a health care practitioner to patients at risk for a potential opioid overdose, and was not invented for the bulk purchase market that includes public entities or non-profit organizations. To address the needs of such entities, kaléo created the kaléo Cares Product Donation Program which ensures that qualifying organizations, such as first-responders, health departments, and non-profits serving patients in need, can access EVZIO at zero cost.
“The opioid epidemic is killing about 91 people, on average, each day. We can’t stand by and hope that things change on their own,” said Spencer Williamson, President and CEO of kaléo. “By increasing access to this potentially life-saving medicine, EVZIO is helping to reduce the number of needless deaths from opioid overdose in the United States.”