HALIFAX -- Nova Scotia is spending $1.1 million to make an opioid overdose antidote more widely available and to fund groups that provide clean needles to addicts.
Dr. Robert Strang, the province's chief medical officer of health, made the announcement today in what he said is an early part of a wider plan aimed at heading off the kind of overdose death crisis that is afflicting British Columbia and Alberta.
Strang's latest estimate is that last year 60 people died in Nova Scotia of opioid overdoses, including four deaths from illicit fentanyl, a potentially deadly drug increasingly finding its way onto the streets in the Maritimes.
The funding for the overdose antidote naloxone amounts to $564,000, enough for 5,000 kits this year that will be made available through community and health care organizations, including pharmacies and police.
Three community-based organizations that distribute needles and information to addicts will receive the remaining money.
A total of $160,000 will go to Northern Health Connections in Truro; $247,000 for Mainline Needle Exchange in Halifax; and $152,000 to Sharp Advice Needle Exchange in Sydney.
