High school students in Canada will be trained to use naloxone

Jean-Benoit Lego, Canadian Press Published Tuesday, June 14, 2022, 7:27 AM EDT Last Updated: Tuesday, June 14, 2022, 7:27 AM EDT

Hundreds of thousands of high school students in Canada will be taught how to respond to opioid overdoses, including how to inject naloxone, a drug used to reverse the effects of an overdose.

The Advanced Coronary Care Foundation announced on Tuesday that its new training program will be added to CPR and automated external defibrillator training, which it offers for free in high schools across the country.

Each year, in addition to learning how to inject naloxone, about 350,000 students will learn about opioids and how to determine when to call 911, when to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and when to administer naloxone. The training will first be deployed in Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia before expanding to other provinces.

“The (opioid) crisis is very real,” Jocelyn Barrio, the foundation’s medical director, said in a recent interview.

The Public Health Agency of Canada reported more than 5,386 opioid-related deaths between January and September 2021. The majority of deaths – 94 percent – were accidental.

“Her heart attacks don’t happen that much to young people,” Barrio said. “But opioids are more likely to be the same age … to go to school or a party.”

If a young person encounters someone with heart failure, Barrio said, he or she will be taught how to use naloxone. “And we hope it works; but if we don’t do anything, it’s clear it won’t happen.”

Barrio said the training, which was developed following 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 the risks of opioids.

Carol Nado, who runs the curriculum in Quebec, said between 1,000 and 1,500 teachers in Quebec will be trained to teach the program to about 70,000 students each year in the province.

“We have trained in 141 schools, representing 405 teachers who are ready to teach all their students opioids,” Nado said. – There are many people.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on June 14, 2022.