Terry DeMio

tdemio@enquirer.com

As the heroin epidemic rages on with other deadly opioids sneaking into the supply, Kentucky wants to link more people to the medication that can reverse an overdose.

The state launched the website KyStopOverdoses.ky.gov on Wednesday, which allows people to search for pharmacies that carry naloxone by city, county, or ZIP code. Soon, the state will add health departments that offer the antidote to the searchable database and map.

The drug naloxone, also known by its brand name Narcan, blocks the effects of heroin and opioids in the brain. But the drug can also pull someone who is overdosing into immediate withdrawal and restore a normal pattern of breathing.

During a late-summer bout of overdoses that spilled into Kentucky, emergency responders were using larger than normal doses of naloxone to revive people who had, often unwittingly, taken the powerful opioid fentanyl or the super-potent, large-animal opioid carfentanil.

The new website also serves as an information portal as well. Visitors can get information on how to recognize and react to overdose, how Kentucky's Casey's Law can help parents petition the court to get treatment for an unwilling loved one; how Kentucky's Good Samaritan law works to protect people from prosecution when they report a drug overdose.

The Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy partnered with the Advancing Pharmacy Practice in Kentucky Coalition, the Kentucky Agency for Substance Abuse Policy and the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy to develop the website.

"I've just heard so many stories of families with an opioid-use disorder and their inability to locate" naloxone, said Van Ingram, executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy. "Now, with the introduction of illicit fentanyl into the drug supply the danger's higher than ever of overdose."

The map includes more than 300 pharmacies across the state where people can get naloxone.

Most of the pharmacies have an agreement with a physician that allows them to provide the medication without a prescription, Ingram said. The costs are sometimes covered by insurance.

The website will be updated as pharmacies are added, Ingram said.

Since June 2015, the Advancing Pharmacy Practice in Kentucky Coalition has trained nearly 1,500 pharmacists, and close to 1,200 have been certified to dispense naloxone without an individual doctor’s prescription, according to Trish Freeman, director of the Center for the Advancement of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy.

“Pharmacists are among the most accessible healthcare providers in many areas of Kentucky, and we will continue to work towards our goal of making life-saving naloxone available via protocol in every pharmacy in the commonwealth, said Freeman, who is also president of the Kentucky Pharmacists Association.

The state does not have a tally of how many lives have been saved in the commonwealth with naloxone.

But in Northern Kentucky, St. Elizabeth Healthcare counted 1,168 heroin overdose reversals in its five emergency departments in 2015. The number of cases stabilized in the beginning of 2016; however, since July, St. E has seen skyrocketing overdoses. In August alone, when carfentanil was spotted in the heroin stream in the region, the emergency departments counted 174 heroin overdose reversals. That number topped all other months since 2012.