Naloxone is back on the agenda at Windsor City Council.
In 2018, Ward 9 Councillor Kieran McKenzie asked administration to conduct a comprehensive analysis as to the potential impacts of equipping all City of Windsor first responders, including police and fire with the capacity to administer Naloxone in the field.
Two years later, the answer is in and McKenzie believes the report does lay out and justify the use of Naloxone by all first responders.
"I'm grateful to see the information come forward and what it does is, it lays out the case that it is an appropriate tool that we should be equipping our first responders with, there's no question about that, the data shows that, he says. "That's the good part but again, two years to get to this point."
Used to counter the effects of opioid overdose, McKenzie says he doesn't understand why its taking Windsor so long to get on board with first responders carrying the tool.
"To equip these people serving on the front lines with this tool to help folks in our community, when many many other communities in Ontario have already adopted and implemented the use of naloxone as part of the tool kit."
McKenzie feels this is just one of the pieces of a community-wide harm reduction strategy.
"I do hope on Monday that we are able to sort of move past this aspect of the debate," he says. " [We need to] accept that it's an appropriate tool to equip all of our first responders with and have council send that message to all of the first responders that are operating on our community."
The report by city administration also states that the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) supports the use of naloxone by first responders as part of their harm reduction strategy. WECHU does not provide oversight or medical delegation to first responder agencies administering naloxone but will provide the kits free of charge.
Between the development of training and the training itself, administration estimates it would cost about $4,000 for Windsor fire and Essex-Windsor EMS to be equipped with naloxone.
As AM800 News reported in November, Windsor police anticipated the City Centre Patrol (CCP) and the Problem Oriented Policing (POP) Unit would be equipped with naloxone by the end of the 2020.