Program report: Training family members and loved ones to respond with naloxone

By Stephen Malloy

As you’ve read on this blog, programs that train drug users to respond to opiate overdose with naloxone are expanding across the globe. An important intervention that’s often overlooked, however, is training family members and “carers” - friends, housemates, and loved ones - of drug users to use naloxone. A program in the UK is doing just that, as Stephen Malloy reports:

In July 2009 the National Treatment Agency (NTA) supported a 16 site pilot project, entitled “overdose prevention and naloxone training for families and carers.” The pilot sites, which were spread across England, recruited and trained family members/carers of people at risk of opiate-related overdose death in overdose prevention; signs and symptoms of overdose; and naloxone administration and basic life support techniques. The family member/carer was also supplied with naloxone IF the person at risk of overdose was available to give written or oral consent for the supply to be made.

A new report shows that 495 family members/carers were trained, and at the time of its writing 20 lives had been saved thanks to naloxone use (18) and basic life support (2). These results demonstrate the need a wider circle of family/carers to be engaged around overdose prevention and crucially, be supplied with naloxone.