High doses of opioids : Trump urged him to declare a state of emergency

Health 2 August, 2017


steveheap/epictura

Published the 02.08.2017 at 14h54



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opioïdesoverdoseEtats united States

Take the measure of the severity of the situation. Prioritize, act quickly and before any other thing. The Commission of the White House devoted to the crisis of opioid drug abuse has asked Donald Trump to declare this as a national emergency to deal with the deadly epidemic that is rampant in the United States. The members of this Committee, bipartisan, have made this application as the ” first and most urgent recommendations.”

“With approximately 143 Americans who die each day [opioid overdose], America endures a balance sheet equivalent to one September 11 every three days,” write in a report, the members of this Commission created by Donald Trump in march.

Force the action

The fact of declaring the epidemic as a national emergency, allowed one to “strengthen the power of the office [Donald Trump] in order to adopt stringent measures, and force the Congress to focus on funding and effective measures,” they argued.

The Commission has also proposed to waive a federal law that limits the number of people suffering from addiction that may benefit from medical coverage. It has also called for wider access to treatment for opioid addiction, including naloxone, an antidote to overdose of opiates. Finally, she requested that education initiatives are in place at the destination specifiers.

50 000 dead in 2015

In the United States, two million Americans have developed an addiction to painkillers based on opiates. The high doses of opioids have killed 50 000 people in the country in the past year, according to the authorities, which evoke a major crisis of public health. A recently published study by the journal Annals of Internal Medicine shows 36 % of Americans have received a prescription for opiate medications in 2015.

Several States (Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia have already declared states of health emergencies on their own territory.