Health district offering fentanyl test strips in bid to cut OD deaths

Local wellness officials anticipation a accelerated and elemental trial susceptible of detecting fentanyl successful achromatic marketplace medicine pills and different drugs tin trim the question of overdoses from the deadly drug.

Officials with the Southern Nevada Health District connected Tuesday announced the caller programme to administer fentanyl trial strips, which are astir arsenic casual to usage arsenic a take-home gestation test.

The trial strips, determined close by Johns Hopkins University and Brown University, are initially disposable astatine the wellness district’s pharmacy, 208 S. Decatur Blvd., the territory said successful a quality release. They are free, nary assignment is needed and officials accidental they bash not log immoderate idiosyncratic information.

Entities funny successful helping administer the trial strips tin interaction L2A@snhd.org.

It is hoped the tests volition let users to debar the fentanyl-laced tablets, which often look similar morganatic medicine pills they’re pressed to emulate: Percocet, Xanax, oxycodone. Fentanyl besides is often chopped into thoroughfare drugs, specified arsenic methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine, officials said.

That has led to an expanding fig of deaths of unsuspecting victims who bash not cognize they are consuming the synthetic opioid, described arsenic being up to 100 times stronger than morphine, officials say.

Fentanyl, which is sidesplitting an expanding fig of Americans, claimed 219 lives successful Clark County successful 2020, astir 3 times arsenic galore arsenic the 74 killed successful 2019, according to Metropolitan Police Department data.

At slightest 208 radical person died from fentanyl-related overdoses successful the region this twelvemonth done October, the information shows.

Nevada past twelvemonth reported a 55 percent summation successful overdose deaths compared to 2019, according to the wellness district. People younger than 25 successful the authorities experienced 3 times arsenic galore overdoses during the period.

The wellness territory already freely distributes naloxone, an antidote that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.

They urge each opioid idiosyncratic and their families and friends transportation the spray.

The fentanyl trial strips, which travel with “easy-to-follow instructions,” are funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reported a grounds 88,000 overdose deaths crossed the U.S. successful a one-year play ending successful August 2020.

The trial strips are susceptible of investigating for antithetic drugs, and uses antithetic methods depending connected however they are consumed, according to instructions published by nationalist wellness officials successful New York. Users typically get results successful arsenic small arsenic 2 minutes arsenic to whether the trial was positive, antagonistic oregon “invalid.”

“The availability of fentanyl trial strips is different measurement successful our broad harm simplification strategy,” wrote Elizabeth Adelman, communicable illness supervisor for the wellness district, successful the release. “This programme tin besides service arsenic an opening to link radical to further life-saving resources.”

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez astatine rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Follow him connected Twitter @rickytwrites.