A life-saving drug that yanks overdose victims into sobriety has been overlooked by Australian addicts and the medical establishment despite being cheap, non-addictive and widely used overseas.
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Emergency doctors, drug researchers and primary health providers that specialise in addictions want addicts to be trained in how to use Naloxone so they can revive their peers from overdose.
They will discuss ways to increase access to the drug at the Australian Drugs Conference in Melbourne on Tuesday, including making it available over the counter.
Penington Institute chief executive John Ryan, who is organising the conference, said the drug had almost universal support, including from the Australian Medical Association.
"But doctors are not prescribing it and patients aren't putting their hands up to ask for it," he said.
"It's about educating the health workforce and encouraging them to make it more available to lay people."
The drug has been available since the 1970s and is used by ambulance workers and hospital emergency departments to reverse the effects of opioids, usually via a needle into the thigh.
It rouses overdose victims to consciousness within three minutes, whereupon the agonies of withdrawal begin immediately.
The Langton Centre in Surry Hills and Kirketon Road Centre in Darlinghurst have trained more than 100 addicts and carers in how to use Naloxone under a pilot program that has been running since 2012.
Kirketon Road Centre director Ingrid van Beek said the clinic had followed up with 18 of those clients since prescribing them Naloxone and they had reported at least 30 overdose reversals, some of which were life-saving.
"Interestingly, the drug users themselves feel quite empowered by it and they're taking responsibility, and there's an altruism you wouldn't normally attribute to drug users," Dr van Beek said.
Moves to make Naloxone more accessible at the peak of the heroin epidemic in the late 1990s lost their urgency when the heroin drought arrived in 2001 and the number of overdoses fell by a third.
However, heroin use has been steadily increasing again since 2006.
"It's not so much funding that's the issue because Naloxone is quite a cheap medication and presumably saves money because ambulance call-outs are certainly not cheap," Dr van Beek said.
"The main barrier is the fact that Naloxone needs to be prescribed by a medical practitioner.
"At places like Kirketon Road and Langton we have our own staff but some of the places we would like it to go to don't, so it's coming up with the capacity to reach those places."
Part of the pilot involves sending doctors and nurses to train medical practitioners in how to prescribe and use it.
Naloxone was listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme last year and is available to anybody carrying a healthcare card at $5.99 for a five-pack.
In the United States, Britain and central Asia, Naloxone is distributed among addicts to revive their peers if they accidentally overdose.
St Vincents emergency director Gordian Fulde said Naloxone was not a drug that could be abused but had saved countless lives.
His staff recently revived a woman in her early 20s who had overdosed on heroin in her first experience of the drug, which has become a more frequent phenomenon as heroin use increased.
"At the end of the needle you can see their life coming back to them," he said.
"This lady was a floppy doll coming out of the car, and to then see her wake up, start breathing, picking up ... you know she probably would have died."
