First province to allow paramedics to administer an anti-psychotic drug for meth users

Manitoba has become the first province to give paramedics the ability to administer a drug that helps to prevent methamphetamine-related psychosis.

To start Substance and Awareness Awareness Week, Health Minister Cameron Friesen announced Monday that Olanzapine is now part of the paramedics toolkit.

<img src = "https://media.winnipegfreepress.com/images/400*341/NEP5110235.jpg" alt = "Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press Files

To start Substance and Awareness Awareness Week, Health Minister Cameron Friesen announced Monday that Olanzapine is now part of the paramedics toolkit.

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"We add an additional tool to these parameters, and we believe this will help here keep not only addicts to people who show signs of stress, signs of psychosis or extreme harassment … help keep safe, as well as responding to paramedics and those around them, "said Friesen.

Olanzapine is an antibiotic medication that can be taken orally with disintegrating tissue. It helps to reduce the severity of the symptoms, such as harassment, to those who have used a meth.

The health minister acknowledged that the drug was a piece of the state's state plan, but not the whole pos.

The government has already opened five fast pilot access to tolerance medication clinics and increasing bed capacity in some treatment facilities, Friesen noted. He could not reveal when a long-term strategy for dealing with a failure in Manitoba was introduced, but referred to the Virgo May 2018 report on mental health and addictions as the province map.

"Manitobans can expect that the government will continue to respond, that we will continue to release additional announcements as we absorb that report, as we look at what we need to do, and as we, I believe, demonstrating the same flexibility and innovation. We respond, "he said. "We have not done everything we need to do and we are fully involved in this work."

Dr. welcomed Ginette Poulin, medical director of the Addictions of Manitoba Institute, added olanzapine to the paramedics arsenal. He also noted that much more work was done to break the crash failure.

"Because it's a crisis so severe, it's hard. We're responding rather than being proactive. And it's hard to stick to what I'm feeling like some kind of drug per day, & # 39; " says Poulin.

"So we were dealing with the opioid crisis and trying to find ways to manage this more effectively, and then we had a failed craft … We are trying to look at other jurisdictions and, unfortunately, when crystal meth , there's no magic or no polill antidote that can solve it all. "

NDP health critic Andrew Swan said the provincial government had been "at the top of the top in providing information about cannabis," but less on public education for fail.

"This is a stop gap measure. We need to do everything we can to protect first responders, but there is so much more that this government does not have to take, "he said.

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