Registered Nurse Leigh Chapman carries a naloxone kit with her every day and encourages others to do the same.
“I don’t leave home without it. Everyone should have one,” she told Global News.
Just last month on her drive home from work, she said she saw someone face down on a park bench suffering from a drug overdose. Chapman pulled over and responded even before Toronto fire, paramedics and police arrived.
“We could be putting naloxone in parks. We could be putting naloxone everywhere there’s an automatic external defibrillator for people to be able to respond,” Chapman said.
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Naloxone is a medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose. Leigh Chapman said she believes it can save lives and “everybody could be a first responder in this overdose epidemic.”
Chapman lost her brother Brad to a drug overdose on Aug. 26, 2015. His name is now tattooed on her left arm. Brad had a multitude of drugs in his system, including fentanyl. Since his death, Chapman works as a harm reduction advocate.
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She has also started a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising $5,000 to support Overdose Action Toronto and its efforts to draw attention to the escalating overdose epidemic and support direct actions aimed at increasing awareness among Toronto resident about overdose deaths.
Chapman said she is encouraged by Toronto Mayor John Tory’s calls to speed up the city’s action plan in the midst of the opioid crisis, but adds she feels more could be done sooner.
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As does Walter Cavalieri of the Canadian Harm Reduction Network.
“It is a problem which is big. It is clearly growing. It will probably get much worse before it gets better,” he said.
“We need to take action now. We should have taken action 10 years ago.”
He said he gives the city “a D-minus” grade for its approach to the overdose epidemic and insisted Toronto police need to be equipped with naloxone, like other first responders.
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“This dithering about, ‘Oh it will take months and months,’ nonsense – 15 minutes of training,” Cavalieri said.
Both Cavalieri and Chapman said they’re hoping for increased funding for community health centres to go toward naloxone distribution and overdose prevention education. Chapman added pop-up supervised injection sites would also be useful.
“I think the notion of having naloxone readily available is a key principle of harm reduction,” she said.
“Just like having condoms available doesn’t condone sexual activity, but it does acknowledge that people are going to do things and we want them to do it safely.”
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