The opioid epidemic has reached new levels in Maryland, increasing the need for life-saving medications like naloxone. Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leanna Wen says there isn't enough naloxone to meet the demand. 

She says more than 800 people have been saved in the last two years with overdose reversal medications, but numbers are skyrocketing  driving up the costs of naloxone.

"We are short of funding for it," Wen said. "There's plenty of naloxone if we're able to buy it and the manufacturers have been generous in that we've received donations from some of the manufacturers and we've gotten thousands of units of Narcan from these manufacturers, but we should not depend on the charity of drug companies."

Dr. Wen says the Health Department is depending on the state and federal governments to provide funding for these medications.  

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It can save lives, but Baltimore’s Health Department is being forced to ration Narcan.

Alex DeMetrick reports, preventing deaths from drug overdose has left the department trapped between increased demand for Narcan, and not enough money to buy what’s needed.

Narcan is the drug that can stop a drug overdose and save a life.

“The problem is that we just don’ have enough money to purchase more Narcan, and as a result we basically have to ration it,” says Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen.

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Baltimore health officials are running low on naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug used hundreds of times by bystanders in the last couple of years to save lives.

Dr. Leana Wen, the city health commissioner, said demand has jumped significantly along with the drug epidemic and the health department needs funding for more supplies.

"We are rationing," she said. "We're deciding who is at the highest risk and giving it to them."

The city has about 4,000 doses left to last until next May. The department will distribute them, two at a time, to residents, including IV drug users encountered by the city's needle exchange vans or by outreach workers in "hotspots," areas where a spate of overdoses recently occurred.

"If I had 10,000 doses and gave them to everyone who requested them, I'd run out in about two weeks," Wen said.

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State health officials said 2,089 people died of an overdose in 2016 in Maryland.

The deaths represent the largest year-over-year increase in overdose deaths ever recorded in Maryland history, state health officials said.

State health officials said almost 90 percent of the deaths were opioid-related.

Carin Miller, with Maryland Heroin Awareness Advocates, said these deaths are the latest sign of a health crisis in the state.
“We have a 68-year-old grandfather who is injecting heroin with his grandson,” Miller said. “We had an 86-year-old woman in Frederick County and the family went in and thought she had the flu and they said, ‘We're sorry your grandma is in withdrawal.’”

In Frederick County, 88 people died of overdoses last year, a 100 percent increase from 2015.

“The numbers are absolutely devastating,” Baltimore City Health Department spokeswoman Michelle Mendes said. “In Baltimore City we had 694 total overdoses in 2016.

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