Recent Overdoses Raise Concern for First Responders

A recent ten day stretch saw a dangerous streak of heroin overdoses in Fond du Lac. Between July 14^th and 24^th, Narcan was administered to four patients who suffered from life-threatening overdoses. 

Assistant Chief of Fond du Lac Fire and Rescue Todd Janquart tells us it’s a higher concentration of cases than usual, but “it ebbs and flows. Sometimes we’ll see a little bit of a higher number, sometimes we’ll see a bit in the lower numbers. We’ve seen upwards of ten or twelve overdoses in a month. It’s not entirely unusual, but when we talk about ten days out of thirty days and a concentration in that time frame, it’s a fairly high amount.”

Janquart adds that the issue compounds when fentanyl and carfentanil are mixed in. Not only are they more dangerous, but he says “when people are able to get that sort of medication they can use that,
which is probably cheap compared to the heroin that they’ve been getting and
use that in place of the heroin and call it heroin and it becomes a financial
advantage for drug dealers.”

Janquart adds that Narcan usually works within minutes for a normal heroin overdose. But he points out that “Narcan is not the golden bullet, it’s not the one solution. Narcan can
really help to save somebody’s life – somebody who is addicted to opiates. But
realistically the most important thing to look at is addiction treatment. And
when it comes down to opiate and heroin addiction, the links are very strong,
it’s a hard addiction to break.”