High School Students Across Canada Being Trained On How To Administer Naloxone

Hundreds of thousands of high school students in Canada will be trained on how to respond to someone taking an opioid overdose, including how to inject naloxone – a drug used to reverse the effects of an overdose.
The Advanced Coronary Treatment Foundation announced on Tuesday that its new training program will be added to CARPA training and the automated external defibrillator that offers free to high schools across the country.
Each year, in addition to learning how to inject naloxone, approximately 350,000 students will learn about opioids and how to recognize when to call 911, when to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and when to administer naloxone.  The training will first be deployed in Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia before being extended to other provinces.
“The (opioid) crisis is very real,” said Jocelyn Barriault, the foundation’s medical director, in a recent interview.
The Public Health Service of Canada reported more than 5,386 opioid-related deaths between January and September 2021. The majority of deaths – 94 percent – were accidental.
“Heart failure… does not happen that much in young people,” Barriault said.  “But with opioids, there’s a good chance he’s the same age … it happens at school or at a party.”
If a young person is confronted with someone with heart failure, Barriault said, they will be trained on how to administer naloxone.  “And we hope it works; but if we do nothing, it is clear that it will not work.”
Barriault said the training, developed after a successful pilot project in Ottawa involving 186 students and 15 teachers in 2019, will be an opportunity to teach young people how to respond to emergencies and their risks. opioids.
Carole Nadeau, who leads the training program in Quebec, said between 1,000 and 1,500 Quebec teachers will be trained on how to teach the program to about 70,000 students each year in the province.
“We have trained 141 schools, representing 405 teachers who are ready to teach all their students about opioids,” Nadeau said.  “It’s a lot of people.”
This Canadian Press report was first published on June 14, 2022.