Reclusos de Nueva York formados para usar un antídoto contra los opioides

Wikimedia Commons - James Heilman

Noticias

Reclusos de Nueva York formados para usar un antídoto contra los opioides

30 mayo 2018

Un programa del estado de Nueva York amplía el acceso a la naloxona enseñando a los reclusos cómo usar un antídoto que salva vidas, de modo que, tras la salida de prisión, lo usen para ayudar a erradicar las muertes por sobredosis de opiáceos. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

By Jonathan Allen

The inmates filed into a room at a New York prison, squeezed into classroom-style desks, and watched a guard demonstrate how a small plastic tube could help them save lives when they return to the streets of a nation gripped by an opioid epidemic.

The weekly class at the Queensboro Correctional Facility in New York City is part of a state program to expand access to naloxone, a drug delivered through a nasal spray that can quickly revive someone who is overdosing on heroin or an opioid-based prescription painkiller.

By giving naloxone kits to inmates upon their release, New York state officials hope those in need will have a better chance of getting the antidote in time.

Some of the prisoners, dressed in baggy green prison uniforms, were surprised by the simplicity of the naloxone kits as they recalled the painful loss of friends or relatives killed by opioid addiction.

“It makes me think, ‘Jesus, if she had that, she would be saved’,” said Marc Webb, 34, reflecting on the overdose death of a close friend a few years ago. “I wish they had a nasal spray to stop addiction, period.”