Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Display at NY State Fair Helps Save Lives on National Overdose Awareness Day

WAER News

One display at the New York State Fair Wednesday was trying to help people save lives in the face of the national heroin and opiate overdose epidemic.  A-C-R Health employees know all too well the impacts of the addiction.

Amid the fair food favorites and midway rides, the science and agriculture displays, today was a booth where people could learn to save a life.  A-C-R Health recognized international overdose awareness day by teaching people how to administer Naloxone.  (Naloxone is sometimes referred to as the product name Narcan) You might have heard about the drug that can revive someone who’s overdosed on heroin or an opioid painkiller.  A-C-R Health Director of Prevention Services Erin Bortel thought she could get the life-saving training to a large audience at the fair.

“I’m in this field because I lost someone to an overdose a decade ago.  Naloxone wasn’t available at that time.  I think back of if that had happened 10 years ago and I had Naloxone on me could I have helped.  That fuels me today.  We are all touched by this in some way whether you know it or not.”

A-C-R Health has been hit directly by the overdose epidemic in the recent past.  One volunteer had to be revived with Naloxone, while two other volunteers died of overdoses.  And Bortel says, even one of the agency’s staff members lost his life to an overdose. 

“There’s no group that’s protected, so even on the professional level, people that ‘know better’ are all susceptible to this type of decision making and then the consequences, which in this case instance was a fatality.”  

Credit ACRHealth.org

  (ACR Health offers training on the use of Naloxone or Narcan to reverse overdoses year round)

Bortel considers the Naloxone a game changer …and makes a comparison to precautions she takes as a mother of children with severe allergies.

“I consider Naloxone emergency first aid, just like an EpiPen.  Any person in our community who is likely to come in contact with someone who’s experiencing an overdose should have this on them.  And the thing is, who is likely?  We just don’t know because so many people are using now.” 

Bortel doesn’t ignore the drug usage problem here, noting the drugs are illegal and the addiction often leads to other criminal behavior to support it.  She’d like to see some help for those people who end up in jail.

“Incarceration gives us an opportunity to initiate treatment with someone who’s struggling with addiction.  There’s a pilot program proposed between the Onondaga County Health Department and county Justice Center where people who are being released into the community get an injection of a medication called Vivitrol, which will give them about a 30-day protection against using opiates.  If they were to use heroin, for example, it wouldn’t do anything, because those receptors are blocked.” 

A-C-R Health gets other requests for detoxification programs, inpatient treatment and medication assisted treatment…all of which have waiting lists. 

Nationally health officials say 120 people die of heroin or opioid deaths each day.  

Chris Bolt, Ed.D. has proudly been covering the Central New York community and mentoring students for more than 30 years. His career in public media started as a student volunteer, then as a reporter/producer. He has been the news director for WAER since 1995. Dedicated to keeping local news coverage alive, Chris also has a passion for education, having trained, mentored and provided a platform for growth to more than a thousand students. Career highlights include having work appear on NPR, CBS, ABC and other news networks, winning numerous local and state journalism awards.
John Smith has been waking up WAER listeners for a long time as our Local Co-Host of Morning Edition with timely news and information, working alongside student Sportscasters from the Newhouse School.