Drug users to be trained on how to prevent and treat overdoses

DRUG users in Cork will be trained by the Health Service Executive to prevent overdoses and help to treat others who have overdosed near them in a new peer programme, which is set to begin in early 2024.

The HSE has confirmed that its National Social Inclusion Office, in collaboration with partner support services, is launching 16 new peer education and support programmes across the country, including one in Cork.

The news of the programmes on overdose risks, prevention, and management comes as the HSE confirmed that there have been 17 suspected overdoses involving nitazene in Cork city over the past fortnight.

Recovery advocate Bernard O’Hehir told The Echo that heroin users are in contact with each other via WhatsApp groups and “letting each other know that there was poisonous stuff around”.

Cork City South West councillor Colm Kelleher has welcomed the initiative, but says more permanent measures are needed in Cork city. “This underpins the calls for a supervised injection centre in the city, where those dependant can engage with healthcare professionals in a supervised medical facility.”

An extreme-risk drug warning was issued by the HSE on December 7, after it confirmed “a trace amount of a nitazene-type substance has been identified in a light brown powder associated with Cork City overdoses”, and “could be sold as a powder or as heroin without people knowing”.

'EMERGING TREND'

A spokesperson for the HSE told The Echo this week: “Following this new and emerging trend of the identification of synthetic opioids, the Circle Programme is being unveiled as a peer programme.”

The programme will support people who use drugs to understand overdose risks, and take steps both to prevent overdose, and manage it effectively if they are around someone who is overdosing.

Naloxone is a prescription medication used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid drugs, for example heroin, morphine, codeine, methadone, and fentanyl, and is available free from Cork Addiction Services.

It works by displacing opioid molecules from their receptors in the body and brain, and if someone experiences an overdose, it can help to keep a person alive until an ambulance arrives.

Mr Kelleher welcomed the news, but said that the fact that the programme was necessary strengthened the case to introduce a supervised injection centre in the city.

“It’s a very innovative scheme, but it is, in my opinion, reactionary to an unfortunate blight that dependant drug users face at the moment with the overdoses in our streets,” he said.

“I would implore anyone who is dependant to mind themselves over the Christmas period, and know there is help out there, and anyone who knows someone that they feel may be in trouble that naloxone is freely available.”

Mr O’Hehir told The Echo: “As someone who’s been through the system and now as a volunteer and advocate, you could never understand when there was bad gear around why people were still doing it, but this time they’re a lot more clued in.”

He said he put this down in part to work done by HSE and organisations such as Cork Simon Community.

Discussing the HSE peer programme, he said: “I think it’s imperative that homeless groups avail of any training available, because there might not be ambulances available in time.

“It’s a very positive step, because we’re moving into unknown territories now with all the synthetic opioids and all sorts of new drugs around.

“That, along with an injection centre, would be great, but the problem is, no one wants it next door — that can be said for all places that help vulnerable people because they’re known as undesirables, which is wrong.”