Northern Ont. EMS testing new opioid drug treatment program

Cochrane District EMS are offering overdose patients a new way to recover from opioid overdoses that increases their chances of overcoming addiction.

“You overdosed and you were given narcan.”

That’s what Cochrane District EMS operations commander Derrick Cremin told a homeless man, after he had been revived from an opioid overdose.

Paramedics found the man unresponsive outside a local church last week, later learning that he uses fentanyl.

Cremin then went through a checklist of withdrawal symptoms to determine whether the man was eligible for an opioid drug therapy that could save his life.

“We can give you something called Suboxone,” Cremin told the patient.

He then gave him two film tabs of buprenorphine-naloxone, known by the brand name Suboxone.

Without it, the patient may not have survived the week, according to Seamus Murphy, deputy chief of standards and community services.