Bay Area Counties Set To Get Large Influx Of Anti-Overdose Medication
“The overdose epidemic is really staggering, and California has not escaped it,” said Katie Burk of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
San Francisco Chronicle:
Effort Under Way To Make Naloxone Opioid Antidote More Accessible In State
Bay Area public health officials have begun receiving shipments of naloxone — the drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose — in the first state-funded effort to get the emergency antidote to local health departments across California. The distribution of the drug, funded by a one-time $3 million grant approved by state legislators in 2016, marks a ramp-up in the state’s response to deadly overdoses of prescription painkillers, heroin and the synthetic opioid fentanyl. (Ho, 1/3)
California Healthline:
Drug Overdose Deaths Plateau In California, Soar Nationally
Even as the opioid crisis fueled overdose deaths across the nation, the number of Californians who succumbed to these and other drugs has remained stable, new federal data show. Deaths from opiates, cocaine and methamphetamines shot up by 35 percent in the United States between the year ending in May 2015 and that ending in May 2017, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Bartolone, 1/4)
In other public health news —
Los Angeles Times:
A Popular Sugar Additive May Have Fueled The Spread Of Not One But Two Superbugs
Two bacterial strains that have plagued hospitals around the country may have been at least partly fueled by a sugar additive in our food products, scientists say. Trehalose, a sugar that is added to a wide range of food products, could have allowed certain strains of Clostridium difficile to become far more virulent than they were before, a new study finds. The results, described in the journal Nature, highlight the unintended consequences of introducing otherwise harmless additives to the food supply. (Khan, 1/3)