(The Center Square) – Over 16,000 packages of an opioid overdose reversal medication are headed to schools throughout Arizona in hopes to combat fentanyl deaths among students.
Schools in every county in the Grand Canyon State will receive Narcan as part of the School Training Overdose Preparedness and Intelligence Taskforce through the Arizona Department of Education, and those shipments started on Wednesday. Roughly five people die as a result of opioid overdoses in the state daily, and there’s mounting concern that fentanyl overdoses trickle down to children and young adults.
The Center Square reported in May that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne was alarmed by the overdoses of 80 children in Arizona, including seven deaths during the 2021-22 school year.
“Lives will be saved because these kits will be in schools throughout Arizona. The STOP-IT Task Force has done incredible work to address the Fentanyl crisis among school-aged children and this is a major step to protecting the lives of students and raising awareness of this terrible scourge,” Horne said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to a news release, the Arizona Department of Health Services received the Narcan doses with no charge to state taxpayers.
“The STOP-IT naloxone distribution initiative could not have materialized without the unprecedented collaboration between the Department of Education, the Department of Health, AHCCCS and the National Guard,” STOP-IT Co-Chairman Dr. Holly Geyer, Addiction Medicine Specialist at Mayo Clinic Scottsdale said in a statement.
“The representatives appointed through these agencies proved themselves strategic problem solvers who prioritized the mission and produced outcomes that far exceeded the task force’s original targets. Because of their resolve, we are proud to offer schools more than just naloxone. We can offer confidence in the safety of our school campuses and parental peace of mind,” Geyer added.
The drug is nasal spray meant to be used by someone assisting an individual believed to be facing an opioid overdose, and it does require a level of training in order to know how to do it properly, which the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System said it will do, the news release added.
