Strategies for preventing heroin overdose

摘要

The recent "heroin epidemic" has led to a dramatic increase in the incidence of fatal and non-fatal heroin overdose in many countries. Deaths from opioid overdose increased 55-fold in Australia between 1964 and 1997, and heroin overdose was the leading cause of death among men aged 25-54 in Portland, Oregon, in 1999. In 1999, the Drug Abuse Warning Network recorded 4820 heroin related deaths in the United States, as well as 16 646 non-fatal cases of heroin overdose in patients presenting to emergency departments. Every year about 2% of people who inject heroin die, which is six to 20 times the rate expected in peer controls who do not use drugs. This epidemic of deaths among injecting heroin users has led many organisations to develop strategies other than simple abstinence to prevent this tragedy. Several underground and government programmes to this end have recently been implemented in several countries, but their effectiveness and community acceptance needs evaluation.