In Baltimore there is an increased need for more overdose antidotes for people that are going through an opioid addiction, since there is an opioid epidemic at large. A health department worker that has assisted the process of giving out these kits had decided to say that there need to be more since they cannot cover the number of people that need these kits with the number of kits that they have thus far.
The fight against the opioid epidemic
Since there are more and more opioid addiction cases being uncovered on a daily basis, the need for antidotes is increasing as well. The addiction cases include fentanyl and carfentanil, powerful synthetic forms of opioids.
One of the main struggles that Baltimore’s health department has to face every si the fact that naloxone, the antidote, is pricy and the department cannot afford to buy all the resources that they need in order to cover every case. This leads to them having to make a number of hard choices on a daily basis when it comes to the people that are going to receive this medication and the ones that are not.
Other health departments in other states are faced with similar problem, having a small number of naloxone antidote kits compared to the number of people that have gotten addicted to opioids. This only creates a problem felt on multiple state levels. The problem is that the cost is too high for a medication that should be free for anyone battling their addiction. Restricting the access that people have over this type of medication only leads to more overdose cases, as statistics have shown.
The solution to this problem would be negotiating the price of naloxone with the manufacturers so that it would be lower and more people would be able to afford it.