Rebuilding a Safe Haven for Future Crises

These last few months, we have been concentrating our efforts in raising awareness about the harsh reality of rising numbers of deaths due to overdose in Puerto Rico, just as in the United States.  Previously we did not have numbers to back up what our staff was reporting and experiencing on the ground: the fact that Fentanyl hit the markets in Puerto Rico and that heroin and cocaine where being mixed with this potent substance.  Our staff have been warning the Department of Health that our participants where reporting higher number of overdose fatalities and non fatal overdoses.  Our concerns where no paid much attention to.  Only recently did the government began to pay attention to our warning and in the last couple of month we have seen some numbers and reports by the department of health supporting the sad reality we were witnessing.  That is, overdose numbers were on the rise and rapidly growing.  Between 2017 and 2020, at least 1,060 people have died in Puerto Rico of a drug overdose.  We believe this is still an underestimate.  It was only in the last couple of years that the Forensic Insitute included fentanyl in their testing panel for drug overdose.  We have been working non-stop to distribute Naloxone kits to community members as well as drug users, have trained hundreds of first respondents and clinical staff all accross the island and began a media and social networks campaign to make visible this reality. 

With your support we are hoping to increase drug users chances to survive and leave healthy and dignified lives. Thank you for bieng our partners in these efforts.

Links:

• http://www.intercambiospr.org