JACKSON COUNTY, Ore. — The Jackson County Public Health and Human Services has reported they’ve seen an increase in accidental overdoses from illegal opioids.
These overdoses are not from prescriptions drugs and most of the recent cases have not let to deaths. This is why the Jackson County Public Health and Human Services has issued a yellow alert.
Tanya Phillips with Jackson County Public Health and Human Services says most of the overdose cases they’ve seen have come from heroin and fentanyl.
The idea behind the alert is to inform the public and the medical community of these increased overdoses so that they can prevent others from happening in the future.
“Currently we’re working on monitoring overdoses both fatal and non-fatal and being able to do more timely alerts so that we alert the medical community, community partners but also just the public as a whole about what is going on and how they can help prevent overdoses,” Phillips said.
The alert system is a fairly new system for the county which consists of yellow and red alerts. This is the second time this year the county has put out the yellow alert for overdoses.
With the alert, Jackson County wants to remind people that if you do use drugs make sure you have an overdose plan. You should also be prepared and have Naloxone readily available.
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