Holy Family Church in East Price Hill, Ohio, distributed 70 kits of the opioid overdose antidote Narcan at its annual family festival over the weekend, according to a report from WLTW5.
Narcan is a device that delivers naloxone, which reverses an overdose by blocking the effects of opioids. The Narcan kits were made available with the help of the state attorney general's office.
The parish operations manager for Holy Family Church, Jeremy Bouer, told WLTW5 he found a man overdosed in front of his office at the church months ago.
"I recognized what the issue was [and] ran outside. At the time, I did not have a Narcan kit in my office," Mr. Bouer told WLTW5. "The next week, I was down on Warsaw Avenue at Cincy Tool Rental [and] went out the door and there was someone facedown at the McDonald's. The next week, I was down at Lower Price Hill and there was a man who was overdosed."
According to a survey of coroner's offices in Ohio released in May and conducted by the Columbus Dispatch, at least 4,149 people in the state died of a drug overdose in 2016. The number represents a 36 percent jump from 2015's total of 3,050.
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