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St. Joe County health officials setting up free naloxone boxes

Drug overdoses remain high but overdose deaths are declining. St. Joseph County health officials are launching a project they think will keep that trend moving in the right direction.

The opioid epidemic’s drug overdose rates remain high but fewer people are dying from overdosing.

Federal law enforcement has made fentanyl harder to get, but locally police say a big factor in the declining deaths has been naloxone. That’s the FDA-approved drug that rapidly reverses opioid overdoses.

The St. Joseph County Health Department Wednesday announced it’s installing boxes full of free naloxone, mostly in South Bend’s core where they see the most overdoses, but also sprinkled throughout the county.

The health department is giving a larger box to the Memorial Hospital emergency room, and elsewhere it’s locating 20 smaller boxes that are about the size of portable defibrillators.

35 people have died from drug overdoses in the county so far this year, compared to 85 in all of last year.

The health department’s Lindsey Stevenson says naloxone essentially is giving treatment advocates more time to help addicts.

"I like to say that a life saved is a life restored," Stevenson said. "Even if it takes a couple of times for them to realize that they want to be out of this life, we're glad to be able to give them that opportunity that they may not have had if we didn't have this resource."

Parrott, a longtime public radio fan, comes to WVPE with about 25 years of journalism experience at newspapers in Indiana and Michigan, including 13 years at The South Bend Tribune. He and Kristi live in Granger and have two children currently attending Indiana University in Bloomington. In his free time he enjoys fixing up their home, following his favorite college and professional sports teams, and watching TV (yes that's an acceptable hobby).