Saturday, March 30, 2019

Life-saving intervention in the Mission

When you step within the restroom at the church where I worship, St. John the Evangelist in the Mission, you encounter this sign. I am so proud of my community for serving as a sponsor to The Gubbio Project, which opens the building for safe sleeping six days a week to a tiny fraction of San Francisco's street-sleeping homeless population. It's not everything, but it is better than cold wet concrete when the Department of Public Works has trashed your tent again.

And now Gubbio has managed to bring in Narcan for people at risk of overdose on opioids. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA):

Naloxone [brand name Narcan] is a medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose. It is an opioid antagonist — meaning that it binds to opioid receptors and can reverse and block the effects of other opioids. It can very quickly restore normal respiration to a person whose breathing has slowed or stopped as a result of overdosing with heroin or prescription opioid pain medications.

Narcan nasal spray does not require medical training and is legal for broad distribution in California. Someone who is overdosing obviously needs additional help including medical, but access to Narcan can mean someone stays alive.

Gubbio explains that their new initiative ...

is now the Mission's ONLY full-time (35+ hours/week) distributor of Naloxone. ... At Gubbio, we are distributing Naloxone to people who use drugs, their loved ones, their friends, and any other possible overdose bystander. We are also providing training on how to identify an overdose and how to administer the Naloxone. We see this new distribution program as a natural extension of our harm reduction principles and practices.

We are happy to bring this life-saving resource to the Mission! Many thanks to The DOPE Project for making this possible!

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