With opioid overdose deaths apparently down slightly last year in Wisconsin and Dane County, the state on Thursday said 15 agencies — including two in the Madison area — are getting a total of nearly $1 million to set up vending machines with fentanyl test strips and the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, or Narcan.
The state recorded 1,410 fatal opioid overdoses last year, according to provisional data, compared with a record 1,427 in 2021, the state Department of Health Services said. Dane County’s provisional total for last year is 118, down from a record 139 the year before.
The 2022 figures won’t be finalized until fall, but they are the same totals state officials provided nearly a month ago, suggesting few or no additional reports for last year are still being processed.
People are also reading…
More than 90% of last year’s opioid overdose deaths involved fentanyl or other synthetic opioids, similar to previous years, said Paul Krupski, policy director and acting opioid initiatives director for DHS. Many also involved cocaine and methamphetamine, he said.
Fewer than 100 fatal overdoses last year were known to involve xylazine, a tranquilizer seen increasing in some states, such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania. More than half of the deaths in Wisconsin were in Milwaukee County, Krupski said.
After opioid deaths went up significantly in 2020 and 2021 after a small increase in 2019 and a decrease in 2018, Krupski said it was a “positive sign” that the tally appears to have leveled off last year.
“Hopefully, then, in the coming years, we can begin to see decreases, as we were seeing pre-pandemic,” he said.
Madison Street Medicine and Monona-based Tellurian Behavioral Health are among the agencies getting money for vending machines to dispense free fentanyl test strips and Narcan, a relatively new approach to combating opioid overdoses.
“If we can get these harm reduction tools into the hands of people who need it most, which are active drug users, then we know that we’re going to be saving lives,” Krupski said.
The machines offer a more private way of getting the materials than having to talk to workers at an agency, he said.
Madison Street Medicine, which operates the city’s tiny shelter homeless encampment, does medical and housing street outreach, and runs medical clinics at The Beacon and the men’s shelter, will put up two vending machines. Tellurian, which provides various types of treatment for addition, will have one.
The state Department of Health Services announced the grants Thursday, recognized as International Overdose Awareness Day. The money comes from the federal Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant.
Twenty-six health departments and other agencies around the state were previously awarded a total of $2 million for vending machines. That money came from opioid settlement funds, for which the state health department has received about $40 million so far. Combined with the new grants, nearly 50 of the machines are expected to be available around the state soon.
The federal Health Resources and Services Administration on Thursday said it was awarding $300,000 to the Marshfield Clinic to help rural communities respond to overdoses and nearly $800,000 to the Family Health Center of Marshfield and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin to prevent and address neonatal exposure to opioids.