By Evan MacDonald
Advance Ohio Media
CLEVELAND — All Cleveland first responders will soon be carrying naloxone, an overdose reversal drug, in response to the heroin and fentanyl epidemic that is claiming hundreds of lives each year in Cuyahoga County.
Cleveland patrol officers are currently training to use naloxone, which is also known by its brand name Narcan, officials announced Friday during a news conference at City Hall. Cleveland Emergency Medical Service paramedics and firefighters are already carrying the drug.
Cleveland typically sees more overdoses on a daily basis than the number of violent crimes combined, Mayor Frank Jackson said during the news conference.
“You add all those crimes together, and you still may not have as many of those crimes as you have people who overdose,” he said. “That is how many overdoses occur on a daily basis.”
Cleveland police responded to almost 900 overdoses in 2015. In 2017, officers have already responded to more than 260, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said during the news conference. That puts police on pace to see more than 1,300 overdoses in 2017.
Williams said he is hopeful that training police officers to use naloxone will help reduce the number of fatal overdoses in Cleveland.
“Our officers will now be able to save lives, just like our counterparts with fire and EMS,” he said.
The move comes as fatal overdoses continue to rise at an alarming rate in the region. Cuyahoga County saw its deadliest month ever for heroin- and fentanyl-related overdose deaths with 60 confirmed fatal overdoses in February, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office said last week.
Heroin, fentanyl or a combination of the two killed at least 109 people in the first two months of 2017, the medical examiner’s office said. That puts the county on pace to see more than 650 fatal overdoses this year.
That would represent a dramatic increase over the more than 500 people killed by heroin, fentanyl or a combination of the two last year. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet released a complete tally for 2016.
William Denihan, the CEO of the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Cuyahoga County, said naloxone saved 225 lives last year in the county.
The city of Cleveland also partners with Project DAWN, the community-based overdose education and naloxone distribution program. Individuals seeking naloxone for someone at risk of an opioid overdose can obtain kits from paramedics or at the Cleveland EMS Headquarters.
The increased availability of naloxone is just one part of the effort to curb the heroin and fentanyl epidemic. Officials are also working to increase the number of detox treatment beds available in the county.
This year, both the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are providing an additional $250,000 in funding for more beds. The ADAMHS Board is also providing an additional $1 million, Denihan said.
The combined $1.5 million will be used to increase the number of detox treatment beds to 260, up from 147 at the same time last year, Denihan said.
But city and county officials still are struggling to address what Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson called “the greatest public health problem of [his] career.”
“I’ve been asked at times if this is an epidemic ... by any definition, what we’re looking at is an epidemic,” Gilson said. “I would certainly hope that with these efforts, we will start to turn this trend back.”
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