Ohio Valley Residents Offered Narcan Tool To Help Save A Life

WHEELING — Northern Panhandle residents received a free live-saving tool on National Save A Life Day on Thursday.

Volunteers in Wheeling and Moundsville were handing out naloxone nasal spray, which helps reverse the effects of opioids when someone is overdosing on the drug.

The Wheeling site was set up on 18th Street near the Catholic Charities Neighborhood Center. Claudia Raymer McKay, executive director of the Ohio County Family Resource Network, said volunteers were handing out the naloxone along with providing overdose prevention training and information about treatment programs. Wheeling Health Right was also on site providing rapid HIV testing and the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department was providing syringe exchange services.

“Narcan or naloxone … is a basic life-saving device just like learning CPR would be,” she said. 

Raymer McKay said they want drug users or their family members to have access to the devices, but it also makes sense for members of the general public to have one, too. For example, someone may accidentally take a second dose of a prescription or a child may accidentally get into prescription medicines and overdose, she said.

“There’s just every reason in the world to be trained to save a life,” Raymer McKay said. “We praise people who are in recovery; it’s a difficult road. But in order to be in recovery you have to be alive. … The more people who carry Narcan, the more people we will have in recovery one day.”

She noted giving someone naloxone will not harm them if they are not actually overdosing on an opioid. 

“If it has no opioids to attach to, it just flushes out of your system,” she said.

Wheeling resident Paul Zogg, who volunteers at the Neighborhood Center, the Salvation Army, the Ohio County FRN and other organizations, said he wanted to get the free naloxone to keep with him in case he ever needs to administer it to someone. He said, to date, has not had to do so.

“You just never know where something is going to happen. If you can save someone’s life, maybe get them back on the right path to recovery, it would leave you with a nice feeling,” Zogg said. 

In Moundsville, volunteers were set up outside Walmart giving out the naloxone. Mary Hess, executive director of the Unity Center, said her center wanted to participate because it believes everyone should have a chance to get into recovery.

“We need to keep them alive so that we can get them into recovery,” she said. 

In addition to the Unity Center, other volunteers were there with Youth Services System, the VA of Pittsburgh, Marshall County Health Department, Marshall County FRN and Health Plan of the Upper Ohio Valley.

Hess noted free naloxone is always available at the Marshall County Health Department and Unity Center, along with training on how to use it.