January 5, 2015 – Naloxone

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Anchor lead: Price gouging for an overdose treatment should be stopped, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Naloxone is a generic medication that’s very effective for treating people who have taken an overdose of heroin or other opioids.  Now the price of naloxone has been climbing steeply to the point that many are calling it price gouging.  Eric Strain, a drug addiction expert at Johns Hopkins, hopes others will sit up and take notice.

STRAIN:  I think there’s opportunities there, naloxone is available as a generic and there’s opportunities for other companies as well to step in and I hope that other companies would step in and start providing naloxone at a lower cost because it is such an effective medication for opiate overdose.  :18

Strain says making naloxone widely available needs to be done judiciously, however.

STRAIN: Giving it in a medical context is useful.  Certainly people who are not healthcare professionals do medical things all the time.  We can train non-healthcare professionals to do things that are medically related.  :13

Strain says a comprehensive treatment plan must be employed for anyone who’s experienced an overdose. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.