Firefighters carrying meds to help save lives in heroin overdoses

Overdoses from prescription pain medications and heroin are skyrocketing across the Carolinas.

Carolinas Healthcare System is look at a new way to increase access to crucial medicine called naloxone that can literally stop an overdose and save lives.

Charlotte firefighters started carrying the medicine on their trucks last summer.

When firefighters rush to emergency calls, they often find people on death's doorstep overdosing on opioid drugs.

Capt. JD Thomas trains firefighters on how to administer naloxone.

It can immediately revive a patient dying from an opioid overdose.

Firefighters spray the nasal mist medicine up a patient's nose.

"Most of the time we arrive a few minutes before Medic and this gives us a tool in the toolbox we can use until they get there," said Thomas. "We can actually turn that person around."

Since Charlotte firefighters started carrying naloxone last summer, nearly every fire station has administered it, for a total of 23 times.

In 12 of those cases, the patient started breathing again.

Last week, Station 12 near South Boulevard used it to save two people.

Medic tells Channel 9 from May 2014 to this month, paramedics treated more than 1,700 patients with the medicine.

Carolinas Healthcare System is considering easing access to naloxone too.

Director of Addiction Medicine Dr. Steven Wyatt told Channel 9 that in some states, naloxone can be acquired behind the counter, through a pharmacist.

"CHS is looking at ways in which we might be able to start a pilot of doing something similar to that through the CHS pharmacies," Wyatt said.

The hospital system is still finalizing the timeline, but Eyewitness News asked if Dr. Wyatt worried that making naloxone more available could actually encourage drug use.

"People are not sitting around with the drug and naloxone available and then seeing how close to the edge they can get," he said.

Still, firefighters stress even if naloxone brings a person back, paramedics should always be called because relapsing into an overdose is possible.

In just two years, accidental overdoses are projected to be the leading cause of death in North Carolina.

In May, Eyewitness News reported U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, R-North Carolina, is working on action plan to address the problem.