Saskatoon paramedics provide record amounts of anti-overdose drug

Saskatoon paramedics administered a record number of life-saving Narcan doses in 2023.

While the trend is alarming, Medavie Health Services West said that number would have been higher if not for citizens carrying kits of their own.

“Back in 2019, when we’d see a lot of numbers, just over 100,” said Troy Davies, director of public affairs with Medavie Health Services West.

“We could pretty much see it happening on weekends and nights type of thing that was a trend that we would typically see. Now, it doesn’t matter. Any time of day, any neighbourhood, any age.”

In 2023, Medavie administered 744 doses of Naloxone or Narcan. That’s 109 more doses than were given by paramedics in 2022 and 612 more than in 2019, according to Davies.

He said it’s happening everywhere, all the time.

But with the trend on an alarming upward rise, Davies said the number would have been much higher.

He said programs offering Narcan (also known as Naloxone) kits to the community are making a difference every day, whether it’s through the Ministry of Health Narcan Exchange Kit Program, the Take Home Naloxone Program, or the Overdose Outreach Teams.

“The one thing that we’ve really seen trending in the past year was a lot of the calls that we’re responding to were getting cancelled en-route because they received Narcan from bystanders, loved ones, police or fire who might be on scene,” he said. “So that number could have been a lot worse.”

With recent changes to the Saskatchewan health system’s approach to illicit drug use issues, the province said Naloxone kits will continue to be provided for free through the Take Home Naloxone Program.

Prairie Harm Reduction said it distributes the majority of kits to clients of its drop-in centre as well as local businesses, offering multiple education and training sessions a week.

“We distribute kits in the community around our drop-in centre and to people that are accessing services,” said Kayla DeMong, executive director of Prairie Harm Reduction.

“Then we also provide education to a variety of other places like local businesses, a lot of the colleges at the U of S, Sask Poly classes.”

She says the training is similar to common first aid training, but it’s important to be familiar with the treatment before an emergency.

“It's relatively simple training,” she said. “It's more so about getting people comfortable with what is in there. The education really is about showing people how to use a needle, how to load it, how to properly dispose of things, and what that all looks like. And then reminding people that if they come across somebody who is having an overdose or they think is having an overdose, that the operators on 911 are really good at talking people through it.”

Davies said his crews are exchanging an average of one kit per day from the exchange program.

“We’re getting just over 30 a month right now, so almost one a day,” he said.

“It’s something that we are going to that patient, treating them, and then before we leave, we restock them so they have Narcan on site in case this happens again.”

And while he said it’s not a solution to the problem, the presence of Narcan in the community with people trained to use it is reducing the strain on paramedics.