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Heroin and Morphine: Death

Answer

Local authorities are responsible for assessing local needs and commissioning drug prevention, treatment and harm reduction services to meet these needs. This includes helping to prevent drug-related deaths from the misuse of heroin and morphine in coastal communities. Public Health England (PHE) supports local authorities to do this by providing advice, guidance and tools.

Locally, PHE is supporting the South East substance misuse network, which includes Portsmouth, to review a range of opportunities to prevent drug misuse deaths including engaging more people at risk in treatment, improving the physical and mental wellbeing of people in treatment, improving access to naloxone, developing local arrangements for reviewing deaths and near misses, and developing drug alert and early warning systems.

Nationally, the Department and PHE have made it easier for drug services to supply naloxone, published updated clinical guidelines for drug treatment and worked with a network of treatment providers to establish good practice guidance on managing drug-related death risk factors and to improve partnership between treatment providers and other healthcare services. Updated clinical guidelines can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/drug-misuse-and-dependence-uk-guidelines-on-clinical-management

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

244175

Session

2017-19

Subjects

Death Coastal areas Misuse Heroin Morphine

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk