Narcan now available in vending machine at Edgecombe County jail
Edgecombe Couty's first naloxone, or Narcan, vending machine went online recently at the jail in Tarboro.
Deputies, jail employees and recently released inmates can access the opioid overdose reversing drug with just the touch of a button.
The Edgecombe County Community Paramedic Program is working on finding a location for another second machine that would make Narcan be available quickly and for free to the general public.
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The hope is that having Narcan at the jail will help protect a vulnerable population that is prone to overdosing.
"When [people] get out [of jail], they are faced with stressors and reintegration issues, and they overdose," Community Paramedic Program Manager Dalton Barrett said.
In the future, as people get out of jail, the machine will allow them to access the medicine and take some home.
"Nobody should die of an opioid overdose if we have the reversal agent somewhere close by," Barrett said.
Savannah Junkins, a physician's assistant with Carolina Family Health Centers, said she hopes that machines like this will help reduce the stigma surrounding overdoses.
She said, "The vending machine will allow access to a lifesaving product without feeling like you are being scrutinized."
Junkins said she believes people are more likely to get Narcan from a machine than to go to a pharmacy.
"A patient or family can walk right up to a pharmacy in North Carolina and ask for Narcan, but then they have to worry about what the pharmacy individual thinks," she said.
Barrett calls overdoses one of the biggest challenges for eastern North Carolina, and he says, "Putting another tool in the hands of the citizens here will make a big difference."
WRAL Data Trackers 69 emergency department visits for overdoses in Edgecombe County last year.
That's lower than in neighboring counties like Nash and Wilson but higher than counties like Wake and Halifax in terms of rate per population.
Junkins hopes this machine will be the first of many in the county.
"We want to see them as accessible as any other lifesaving device," she said.
