Mercy Health provides Trumbull sheriff’s deputies with free overdose-reversal kits

Staff report

WARREN

Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital and the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office are teaming up to save lives with a drug that temporarily reverses opioid overdoses.

The hospital provided 40 free naloxone kits to the department’s 37 deputies, who often are first on the scene.

Naloxone, also known as Narcan, is a lifesaving overdose antidote that blocks the receptors activated by prescription pain medications and other opioids and reverses respiratory depression so the victim can breathe.

With opioids — prescription pain medications such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, and street drugs such as heroin — victims may not immediately show the effects of overdose.

At the point where someone stops breathing or becomes unconscious, the victim may be very close to death, said Dr. Edward J. Novosel, associate medical director at St. Joe’s.

Many overdose victims die before ambulance personnel arrive, Dr. Novosel said. “Having Narcan available as soon as the sheriff’s deputies arrive is a life- saver.

“The sooner Narcan is administered, the better the chances the overdose victim will survive,” he said in a news release.

All 37 deputies have been trained and certified on how to administer the drug, which is given by spraying a vial of the medication into the victim’s nostrils, said Capt. Jeff Orr of the sheriff’s office and commander of the Trumbull Ashtabula Law Enforcement Task Force.

“We had more than 50 overdose deaths in 2014, and for every overdose death, we had 10 to 15 people overdose who didn’t die,” Orr said.

Ambulance personnel have naloxone kits, but in rural areas of Trumbull County, deputy sheriffs often reach victims sooner, Orr said.

Orr and Terri Grimmett, manager of New Start Treatment Center, approached St. Joseph Warren Hospital for help in acquiring kits for the sheriff’s office, and the hospital agreed.

Providing the naloxone kits to the deputy sheriffs “aligns with the mission of Mercy Health — to extend the healing ministry of Jesus to improve the health of the community,” said Kevin Blair, manager of the pharmacy at St. Joe’s.