A local physician and MUN professor is advocating for naloxone kits to be available for free at pharmacies.
Dr. Françoise Guigné says Newfoundland and Labrador is in the middle of an opioid toxicity crisis, and one way to address that is to increase the availability of naloxone kits.
As of now, Guigné says the kits are not available for free in pharmacies.
She says the province is one of the few in the country not to take that step, which is “mind-boggling.”
Guigné uses Ontario as an example. There, she says such a program has reduced toxicity levels by nine per cent since 2016.
She describes what it was like for her to watch deaths spike over the summer, knowing that other jurisdictions have kits more readily accessible.
“It was one of the lowest points of my career,” says Guigné, who notes that she has lost sleep over the issues. She says she has personally seen the benefits of naloxone when one person would save another before she got to the scene.
