FARGO (KFGO/KVRR) — An NDSU program has received a $250,000 state grant to make Narcan more readily available.
A team of students in the university’s Opioid and Naloxone Education (ONE) program is partnering with public health facilities to make Narcan nasal spray kits available across the state.
“Imagine being in a hockey arena and someone overdoses. There’s no life-saving medication. That person has to wait until an ambulance or police officer gets there,” NDSU professor and pharmacist Dr. Heidi Eukel said.
Because of the grant, Narcan will soon be available in schools, bars, campgrounds, community centers, sports arenas, retail stores and other facilities.
“If we’re waiting until an ambulance gets there, sometimes it might be too late. I like to think of it as that AED,” Eukel said. “Why do we have AED machines in our school gyms? It’s because if someone has a heart attack while watching their child play volleyball, we can start saving them right now rather than waiting until emergency personnel get there.”
The kits will have everything needed to save someone experiencing an overdose, including instructions.
“There’s a video in the box that talks about what to do in the case of an overdose,” Eukel said. “If you find someone unresponsive and it could be due to an opioid, the video actually walks someone through all the steps just like you’d do with an AED. With those AEDs in a school, it talks you through, ‘put the patches here, push this button’. So, that video in the ONE box does that.”
Each box has two doses of nasal naloxone, a CPR mask, gloves and wipes.
“It’s just like a fire extinguisher,” Eukel said. “We hope we never have to use it, but it’s there just in case.”
