On The Front Lines Of The Overdose Epidemic In Baltimore
Tuesday Nov 22nd, 2016
As a wave of heroin overdoses strikes West Baltimore, a medical team warns a stricken neighborhood and hands out last-ditch doses of lifesaving medication.
WEST BALTIMORE — At the sidewalk’s edge in a vacant lot, the crowd gathered around the card table, to learn how to bring someone back from the dead.
On the table rested a vial of naloxone — the drug that reverses overdoses from heroin and other opioid drugs — screwed into a nostril-shaped inhaler. Daryl Mack of the Baltimore City Health Department had assembled the kit in about 30 seconds in front of the crowd.
The watchers, older black men and women from Baltimore’s Sandtown neighborhood, nodded at Mack’s description of a black person turning ashy gray during an overdose as their breathing stops, and how the drug on the table will call them back from the edge of death.