Protection measures for pharmaceutical preparations based on Fentanyl and its derivatives have been strengthened in Italy, a synthetic opiate which in the United States is causing victims especially among young people.
A few days ago, a note from the General Prevention Directorate of the Ministry of Health raised the alert level to 3, the maximum.
For now, circulation in non-healthcare settings is considered limited.
Protocols will be launched in over 20 laboratories in the area and staff training will begin.
In the USA where there is an ongoing emergency regarding the use of Fentanyl, contact alone has triggered skin reactions.
In the USA it kills over 180 Americans a day.
According to the latest research on the topic conducted by the University of California and published in the journal Addiction, the proportion of overdose deaths in the United States involving both Fentanyl and stimulants increased more than 50-fold between 2010 and 2021. Fentanyl in particular, notes The study's lead author, Joseph Friedman, introduced a multiple substance abuse crisis, which means people mix it with other drugs, such as stimulants.
This very mix can prevent the response to naloxone, the antidote for opioid overdoses.
Antidote present in all 118 ambulances, as noted by the president of the Italian 118 system society (Sis 118), Mario Balzanelli, underlining the "potential social threat" represented by Fentanyl, capable of creating a "fierce addiction" with parameters even "up to 80 times higher than those caused by heroin".
A threat, he says, "which must be intercepted in time and radically crushed".
In emergency situations, "the administration of naloxone, as a specific antidote, by our medicalized and nursing crews can be valuable and also life-saving, an antidote - underlines Balzanelli - which is never missing on board our ambulances".
Such an alarm, that of the consumption of synthetic opioids, which led the USA in July last year to create an international coalition of 90 countries to fight synthetic drugs.
On January 31st, China's commitment to stop the illegal trade of the substance also arrived.
And the ban on the consumption of Fentanyl has even entered the Constitution of Mexico.
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