Delta announced that it will carry naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug, in all of its onboard medical kits. This announcement comes after a man died from an overdose on a Delta flight from Boston to Los Angeles.
While the airline has not made any details available for privacy reasons, a passenger tweeted that their recent Delta flight had a man fatally overdose in the plane’s lavatory.
A man just #overdosed on my @delta flight, needle in arm he passed out in bathroom. The plane didn’t have a #NarcanKit. The paramedics took 10 minutes to arrive. They just carried him out in a body bag 🙏🏾@Delta please practice #harmreduction and get a #NarcanKit on every ✈️
— Lynne Lyman (@lynnelyman) July 14, 2019
Flight attendants, doctors, and other passengers tried to save the passenger but he couldn’t be revived.
Starting in the fall, Delta will make naloxone available in its emergency medical kits. The airline will join Frontier, United, and Alaska who have already made naxolone available. The medication is often sold under the brand name Narcan.
The opioid crisis in the US continues to grow, and it’s a complex and controversial issue that requires the expertise of many stakeholders and organizations. At the very least, public advocacy and availability of Narcan will help save lives in the interim.
Even New York City subways have public service announcement ads about the power of Narcan to save a life.
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4 comments
how will they determine what the over dose is from?
Naloxone is safe to give regardless of overdose, if you give it to someone who is unconscious for a different reason, or has overdosed on something aside from an opioid, its not going to harm them, but its also not going to help them. If you give it to someone who has overdosed on an opioid, it will reverse that overdose quickly. Lots of upside, little downside.
The alternative in an inflight situation of someone that has overdosed on an opioid and has respiratory failure would be to support their respiration via mouth to mask, or bag valve mask ventilation, which are not easy to do, even under the most ideal situations, much less for 30 minutes + while you divert.
I applaud Delta on this, they should have done this sooner.
The guy probably had some in his bag or someone on board might have had some
Great, now junkies will feel safe to shoot up in the sky too. Can’t wait for the deluge of emergency landings to start.