Reuters Health, June 14, 2019.
(Reuters Health) – More than three years after Pennsylvania issued a statewide order expanding access to the life-saving opioid antidote naloxone, the product was still hard to purchase in Philadelphia pharmacies, researchers found.
For the current study, Dima Qato of the University of Illinois, Chicago and colleagues contacted 418 drugstores in Philadelphia between February and August 2017 and found that only about 34% had naloxone in stock – and 38.5% of those drugstores required a physician’s prescription to dispense the drug.
“Areas that need this policy enforced the most are areas that lack it and that’s a concern,” Qato told Reuters Health by phone.