Life Savers

In 2020, nearly 34,500 people in Florida died from an opioid drug overdose. That number is shockingly high, particularly because lives can be saved through the expanded use of naloxone, a drug that rapidly reverses the effects of opioid overdose. In December, the Florida Department of Health added a higher dose of the drug to its arsenal to help emergency responders deal with the worsening opioid crisis. As fentanyl gets stronger, police, fire and EMA agencies around the country are turning to higher doses of the life-saving drug, naloxone, an opioid antagonist— meaning that it binds to opioid receptors and can reverse and block the effects of other opioids, such as heroin, morphine, and oxycodone. HEROS (Helping Emergency Responders Obtain Support) is a Florida Health program that provides free naloxone to emergency response agencies. Since the inception of the program in 2018, over 455,000 doses have been provided through the HEROS program to emergency response agencies across Florida.

Administered when a patient is showing signs of opioid overdose, naloxone is a temporary treatment and its effects do not last long. Therefore, it is critical to obtain medical intervention as soon as possible after someone receives a dose. The medication can be given by intranasal spray (into the nose), intramuscular (into the muscle), subcutaneous (under the skin), or intravenous injection. u