City To Feds: We Need Narcan $$

To stop people from dying from an overdose of a deadly opioid, New Haven will need more of the antidote that saves lives and a better coordination of health resources.

That is what city public safety and health officials told New Haven’s Congressional delegation during a roundtable held Friday morning at police headquarters.

U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal along with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro stopped by 1 Union Ave. to hear what the city needs to fight an opioid crisis that has hit other parts of the country hard, and last week killed three overdose victims in New Haven and sent 17 others to the hospitals. Connecticut had 730 people die from overdoses last year; it is on pace to have even more this year.

Rick Fontana, New Haven’s emergency management chief, put it bluntly: The city needs more Narcan.

“This expires in 18 months,” he said while holding up a red and white overdose kit containing the antidote that saved 17 lives last weekend. ​“It has to be purchased by municipalities, and they don’t have the budgets.”

Fontana said ithe kits that New Haven first responders are equipped with will expire in December.

“The kits are expensive,” he said. ​“They’re already over $100.”

“They used to be a quarter of that,” Blumenthal added.

Interim Fire Chief Ralph Black said that in the case of the New Haveners who overdosed after buying drugs that they thought were cocaine — but in fact was the dangerous opiate fentanyl — rescue personnel had to use up to four doses of Narcan to keep people from dying.

“We need the supply to save lives,” he said.

Thomas Balcezak, chief medical officer for Yale-New Haven Hospital, said that about 25 percent of the people who come through the hospital’s emergency department are battling a long history of addiction.

“This is different than anything we’ve ever seen before,” Balcezak said. ​“Opioid addiction has grown and the type of opioids on the street are different than what we’ve been seeing.”

Balcezak said that overdose kits need to be as common in public places as defibrillators are, and drug overdoses should have national measures for treatment the same way that other public health emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes.

Andy Ulrich, vice chair for the YNHH’s emergency department, said that the volume and severity of the overdoses mean that New Haven and other communities need to be ready with a different kind of response from typical cases.

“Usually when they get to us and they’re still alive, they do fine,” Ulrich said. ​“We have other Narcan and other medications, but in this circumstance even the ones that got to us alive didn’t do well. That is what was unusual and this is why we knew this was something different. I think we all agree that this is getting bigger and worse. It’s not going away.”

Other health officials in the room recommended getting people into treatment at the point that they enter the healthcare stream, but also better coordinating their efforts as they treat people.

Police Chief Dean Esserman credited the swiftness of emergency responders in saving lives. He reminded the room that communities can’t arrest their way out of the drug addiction problem.

“What doesn’t work is punishment,” Esserman said. ​“Punishment is not the cure.”

Murphy, Blumenthal and DeLauro, who are all Democrats, promised to pressure their colleagues in Congress, particularly the Republicans majority, to pass President Obama’s proposed $1.1 billion in new funding to fight the nation’s prescription opioid abuse and heroin crisis.

DeLauro said that Congress has been silent about several public health crises including the opioid crisis, Zika and lead paint. She said her colleagues should approve the funding and do so on an emergency basis. Blumenthal said he wants hearings on why the cost of Narcan has risen so quickly and significantly, and called Congress’ inaction ​“shameful and a disgrace.”

Murphy said Congress had a better response to the threat of Ebola. It allocated $4 billion in emergency funding for a disease that only resulted in six cases nationwide.

“That money went to good use, and [Ebola] did not ravage this country the way people thought it would,” he said. ​“But 730 people died in this tiny little state last year, and we’re on pace for 830 [to die] this year, and Congress hasn’t allocated one dime in emergency funding. You cannot manage a public health epidemic of this size without some resources from the federal government.”