Representatives from nearly 30 healthcare providers and law enforcement agencies across Ohio met on Thursday in Dayton to discuss the opiate and heroin epidemic the state is facing, and look for ways .
Though Cuyahoga County saw a 7% decrease in opiate drug overdoses in the last year, numbers are still extremely high throughout the state.
President and CEO of the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association, Bryan Bucklew, says in the last four years, inexpensive heroin has flooded Dayton neighborhoods and hit all demographics.
“It knows no social economic boundaries, it effects all races, all genders, all age levels—from pre-teens to people in their seventies or eighties are overdosing because of heroin," he said. "So, this is a timely meeting and so hopefully we can learn what other communities are doing and other communities can learn from us and we're always looking to have more tools in our toolkit to deal with this issue.”
And Bucklew the problem is sapping city resources.
“You know, it has a tremendous amount of cost and time, not just from the association standpoint but resource allocation in our hospitals and emergency departments and security, so that’s a big challenge.”
But the biggest challenge, according to all the participants of Thursday’s roundtable—sharing ideas and developing strategies to stop the loss of life due to opiate drug overdoses.
