A record will likely be set in Vigo County by the end of 2016.
It is a record no one will be cheering set by a “team” no one wants to be on. The best “participation medal” one can hope for: a dose of Narcan, the nasal spray used as an antidote for opioid overdoses.
Robert Eberhardt, chief of emergency medical services for the Terre Haute Fire Department, said as of late September, his department had administered Narcan 77 times since Jan. 1.
That is an average of eight or nine times per month. If that trend continues, Eberhardt said, he expects that more than 100 doses of Narcan will be used by the end of the year, and that’s the record.
In 2015, there were 86 uses. In 2014, Narcan was administered about 82 times.
All THFD ambulances carry naloxone, commonly known as the intranasal Narcan, that is easy for both law enforcement and ambulance personnel to administer when they encounter a heroin overdose. Most police officers in Vigo County have been or will be trained to administer Narcan.
Heroin has become prevalent in the community, local drug treatment experts say. As methamphetamine has become harder to obtain, drug users turn to heroin.
As a depressant, heroin can slows respiratory function and heart rate to the point a a person drifts away into death.
Administering Narcan interrupts the effect of heroin, allowing a person to be revived. But unless additional medical treatment is received right away, the person will go back into overdose.
Vigo County Coroner Dr. Susan Amos said heroin overdose deaths are up this year.
“I think we had maybe one last year and this year we have already had five or six,” she said on Friday.
State officials plan next week to look at what has become a public health crisis and epidemic in Indiana. Attorney General Greg Zoeller is hosting a discussion in Indianapolis dealing with illicit drug use, including opioid abuse, and how to combat the problem.
Dr. Amos said Vigo County is fortunate in that there have been no deaths from heroin laced with animal tranquilizer, as seen in eastern Indiana just weeks ago.
Opioid abuse has become a growing problem in Vigo County in recent years, mirroring the nationwide epidemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more people died in the United States from drug overdoses in 2014 than in any previous recorded year.
That same year, there were about one and a half times more deaths from drug overdoses than from car crashes, and 61 percent of all overdose deaths involved opioids.
“Unfortunately, the dramatic increase in overdoses mainly from opiates that we all have been reading about in the U.S. and Midwest is happening now in the Wabash Valley,” said Dr. Randy Stevens, an addictions expert
“In 2014, the number of overdoses reached a half million, with 150,000 treated with the opiate antidote Narcan,” Stevens said. “The number of [overdose] deaths reached over 27,000 that year.”
He said he hopes next week’s discussion led by Zoeller will cause state and local officials to do what is necessary for better prevention and treatment efforts.
Stevens has often said that addiction -- whether it is to drugs such as heroin, opioids or methamphetamine, or alcohol -- should be treated as a medical condition and seen no differently than diabetes or any other ailment common in American society.
The stigma attached to addiction, however, makes it hard to convince the public to support treatment options, such as addiction clinics.
A related public health issue is the spread of hepatitis C due to intravenous drug use.
As of last week, state health commissioner Dr. Jerome Adams had cleared a public health emergency for eight Indiana counties. The most recent declaration in Allen County will allow local officials to implement a syringe exchange program in conjunction with testing, referrals to treatment and enrollment in health insurance as an effort to address substance abuse.
Vigo Health Department Administrator Joni Wise confirmed that the health department has had discussion with the local medical community about the growing local problems with hepatitis and the opioid epidemic.
In 2015, Vigo County had a “substantial increase” in newly diagnosed cases of hepatitis that doubled the 2014 statistics, according to health department statistics.
The number of cases of chronic and acute hepatitis C diagnoses in 2012 was 163. That grew to 188 in 2013, dropped to 126 in 2015, but exploded to 255 in 2015.
Other evidence of the growing overdose problem in Vigo County comes from statistics for Vigo County Central Dispatch.
Since April 2015 through late September -- about 18 months -- dispatchers have logged 363 reports of intentional overdoses, and 98 accidental overdoses.
EMS Chief Eberhardt recalls one call he was on years ago when he worked in Michigan. A man with a bad toothache had taken his wife’s pain patch and soaked it in his coffee, then drank the coffee to relieve his pain. He overdosed.
“Sometimes there is blatant use of illicit drugs,” EMS Chief Eberhardt said of emergency responses. “We will find people with needles still in their arms. But there are also times when people take too many medications, or someone else’s pills when they aren’t supposed to.”
Whatever the intention, near-deaths and deaths are on the rise in Vigo County.