What is Naloxone? The life-saving drug for opioid overdoses

Naloxone training to outreach groups and public WATCH: Naloxone is a vital tool in the fight against opioid deaths, and advocates are providing training. Hallee Mandryk reports.

Saskatchewan is still in the midst of an opioid crisis, with 387 reported deaths last year. One essential tool is being used to combat the crisis, Naloxone.

Naloxone is a drug that reverses an opioid overdose and can potentially save lives.

“Dead people can’t recover, and so we want people to recover and to live healthy and long lives, we need to be able to save them first,” said Payton Byrne, an advocate for those experiencing homelessness in Regina.

Byrne has seen first-hand the importance of having the medication on hand.

“There are so many answers as to why everybody should carry naloxone. The biggest thing is that anybody can be affected by an opioid poisoning,” Byrne explained.

“A lot of times when you think of these things you think of the most vulnerable communities like our houseless population, but there’s teenagers dying every single day of drug poisonings we have elderly people who are given Narcan and Naloxone kits with their prescriptions if anything should happen because these are regularly prescribed medications that can kill people.”

The drug can be administered either by injection or via a nasal spray called Narcan.

Narcan is an even more user friendly method. It even comes with instructions.

You peel back the packaging and insert the tip into the nose and then push the bottom so the medication is released in the exact same way one would use a nasal decongestant.

Naloxone kits are available for free in most Saskatchewan pharmacies, and the provincial government website has a map of sites offering Narcan and Naloxone.