A Bangor health organization plans to hand out free medication to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose Thursday evening in downtown Bangor.
The Health Equity Alliance hopes to distribute between 15 and 20 kits at its “Narcan party” from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday in Pickering Square in Bangor. The organization is the first in Maine to give away the drug in a public square, according to Kenny Miller, executive director.
Narcan is the brand name for naloxone, an opioid antidote that can help a person overdosing to breathe again.
“We want to do all we can to make Narcan accessible to the people who most need it,” Miller said Wednesday.
Between March 2016 through January 2017, the Health Equity Alliance distributed 252 Narcan kits, he said. Staff heard of 60 successful reversals because the overdose antidote was available.
“That’s sixty lives saved,” Miller said. “That’s 60 parents spared the loss of a child, or children spared the loss of a parent.”
Last year, 376 Mainers died of drug overdoses, a 39 percent increase over 2015 when 272 people died, according to the Maine attorney general’s office.
Thursday’s event is being held on International Overdose Awareness Day, which was first held in 2001 in Australia, according to its website. Since then community groups, hospitals and government organizations in the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia have held events on Aug. 31 to raise awareness about the rising number of people who die each year from drug overdoses.
For the past several years, the Health Equity Alliance has given Narcan to drug users at the needle exchanges it conducts in Bangor, Ellsworth and Machias. India Street Public Health Center in Portland is the only other organization in the state that gives out Narcan during needle exchanges, Miller said.
The Bangor-based group is also working to raise $28,500 to buy and distribute 376 Narcan kits as part of its Keep Calm and Carry Naloxone Campaign. So far, it has raised about $7,000 toward that goal.