Caroline Lucas – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2015-11-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 19 November 2015 to Question 15636, if he will make it his policy to collect data on which local areas are providing take-home naloxone for opioid overdose in people who use drugs; whether he plans to monitor the effects of provision of naloxone and instances of drug-related deaths; and if he will make a statement.
Jane Ellison
Local authorities are responsible for assessing local need and commissioning substance misuse services, using the public health grant, to meet that need. Public Health England (PHE) supports local authorities in this work and has provided advice on naloxone provision to commissioners and service providers for them to use in planning naloxone supply. PHE is providing support to areas with higher than average death rates.
PHE is engaged in ongoing monitoring and analysis of drug-related deaths based on data collected by the Office for National Statistics, including matching with treatment data. PHE is investigating the use of this data to assess the impact of increased naloxone availability following the legislative change.
