Department of Health launches Project Gabe, seeks to prevent opioid overdoses in Alaska

Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – Kits had been assembled in Juneau Thursday as a part of a brand new state program that can present emergency opioid response assets to working Alaskans.

The namesake of the undertaking, Gabe Johnston, had labored within the seafood processing trade in Alaska. His mom, Denise Ewing, a public well being nurse in Sitka, stated he had struggled with opioids for a few years. In January of this 12 months, he handed away from an overdose.

Ewing and public well being employees gathered on the UAS Noyes pavilion Thursday morning to assemble 150 opioid response kits. The package accommodates naloxone, a medicine that may reverse an overdose. Additionally inside are fentanyl take a look at strips, which might take a look at if the substance is current in a drug, a CPR masks, and a container for sharps. The kits and different academic assets are being offered to fisheries first by Public Well being Nursing, in partnership with the Workplace of Substance Misuse and Dependancy Prevention, and members of the seafood trade.

“I had handed Gabe Narcan kits, he knew how you can use these, and helped save his life twice earlier than,” Ewing stated. “So I began handing them out one on one and simply going to the boats and speaking with the fishermen and attempting to get them on boats. I began with the seafood processing crops and labored with them, and was in a position to try this one on one, however what I needed and envisioned was one thing bigger.”

Overdoses in Alaska have elevated to 92% in 2020-21, and In accordance with plant manufacturing supervisor at Sitka Sound Seafood, Invoice Grant, nearly all of their workforce suits into the best danger age group for drug overdose deaths; males who’re 25-34 years outdated. Undertaking Gabe makes use of the prevailing DHSS program, Undertaking HOPE, which has distributed over 12,000 opioid-reversing naloxone rescue kits and offered coaching on use to first responders throughout the state.

Ewing stated the long-term imaginative and prescient is to have the kits distributed on a wider scale.

“If we go from just like the top-down and attain mother or father corporations and organizations and simply say, ‘you will have an AED, you will have a fireplace extinguisher, you will have a CPR masks, this is only one extra software which you can mount and have obtainable.’ So long as we offer the schooling, which we’re doing, then they’ve the accessibility and the instruments to make use of it and due to this fact can save a life.”

Ewing was requested for her ideas now that the state has reached the purpose to want emergency opioid response kits.

“We’ve reached that time,” she stated. “We’ve reached that time to the place opioid misuse is a serious downside, not simply an Alaska downside, It is an all around the world downside, and as these medicine discover their methods into extra homes, extra lives, extra households, and turns into extra frequent, so does the software to to assist stop an overdose must be extra frequent.”

Undertaking Gabe shall be offering schooling and naloxone freed from cost in 4 major methods:

1) By putting in opioid emergency packing containers in frequent rooms inside processing services, bunkhouses and workplaces
2) By distributing waterproof luggage containing naloxone on fishing fleet vessels
3) By offering opioid overdose kits to people to maintain available in any location
4) By partnering with trade to offer schooling to Alaska staff in regards to the dangers of opioids and substance misuse

“This undertaking builds on work already being performed all through the state by delivering an vital message immediately by way of workplaces to working Alaskans. Naloxone is protected to make use of and simple to manage. Undertaking Gabe makes it much more accessible as time is vital in an overdose. Naloxone can save a life when used instantly, and we have to guarantee it’s extensively obtainable in each ship, each processor, each office in Alaska,” stated Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink. “Undertaking Gabe is a vital step in that path, sadly in reminiscence of a younger man gone too quickly.”