CARBONDALE (WSIL)---Have you ever heard about Narcan?
The SIU School of Medicine asked that question to dozens of students, trying to educate them about the life saving drug.
"Narcan is a drug that can be used to reverse an opioid overdose. So if someone is overdosed on something like pain pills, fentanyl, heroin, this drug can actually reverse that overdose at a molecular level and bring them back around, hopefully saving their life," said Brent Van Ham, a program coordinator for the SIU School of Medicine.
By giving out the drug, along with teaching how to use it, those at the school of medicine hope to curb rising overdose trends.
"Current evidence is showing that opioid overdoses and fatalities are actually going up in the last two years of the pandemic, so we're trying to bring out the Narcan in response to that," said Van Ham.
The CDC reports that overdose deaths were accelerated during the pandemic.
Locally, opioid use was lower than previous years when the pandemic began.
"Over the last three to five months, we are starting to see an increase of fentanyl use come back up. Now it's not an every county in the region, but we are seeing pockets of it in certain regions where there is an increase," said Andy Greer, the Business Development Coordinator for the Gateway Foundation.
Greer said that just because the COVID pandemic has been at the forefront of people's minds, doesn't mean the opioid epidemic has gone away.
"People are still using. People are still dying from use. In fact, we've seen an increase of use during this time, because of isolation, because of lack of supervision, because of amounts of downtime," said Greer.Â
As opioid use continues, local health experts hope that by educating the public on how to stop overdoses, more lives can be saved.
"People should know this is a very safe drug. It's a very effective drug. It's actually quite dramatic in it's ability to bring people back from an overdose, and no one reaches recovery if they die before they can ask for help," said Van Ham.Â
