As the American opioid epidemic continues to worsen, new stories are coming clear about its severity. According to the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, hospital emergency departments are seeing a massive increase in opioid overdose cases. From July 2016-September 2017, a CC report known as Vital Signs shone a light on the significance of the issue.

With no signs of the issue slowing down anytime soon, numbers may continue to show alarming rates of increase. Reports found that visits had gone up by around 30% in the fourteen-month period viewed in the survey.

According to Dr. Anne Schuchat, the Acting Director of the CDC, this problem will only worsen. “This is really a fast-moving epidemic that’s getting worse. The increases in overdoses were seen in adults of all age groups. They were seen in men and women. They were seen in every geographic region in the nation,” Dr. Schuchat said to CNN.

These latest figures will cause alarm for those who believed the epidemic was coming to an end. These figures merely show that the issue is still at large, and that drastic solutions are needed. The report, though, could help to shine a light on how to better identify and track overdoses.

The hope is that this information could be used to help improve responses to addiction sufferers. For that to happen, though, the onus is on law enforcement, medical agencies and local communities to be more vigilant when looking for opioid victims.

Enhancing Prevention

The report shows that there is still much work to be done if this issue is to be finally and fully overcome. With the hope being that emergency services can increase preventative care solutions and empower people to do more, there are major calls for more to be done. Patients, though, must be given more resources to help steel themselves for the challenges that lie ahead for them.

“We really think that this is a wake-up call for all of us — that the opioid epidemic is in all of our communities and that there’s more that we need to do,” Dr. Schuchat explained.

Given the rate in which drugs such as fentanyl (musician Prince had a high amount of fentanyl in him when he died) are used, there’s likely to be a wholesale review in the future as to how – and when – such treatments are handed out.

With the potential for misuse greater than ever due to excess prescription opioids, this problem shows little signs of abating. Given the increase of people buying opioid derivatives that are made in unauthorized and illegal environments, though, there’s a massive battle to help people overcome these issues.

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, 115 people die each day from opioid abuse. With the Midwest of the USA seeing the largest growth in users, a whopping 69.7% increase in prevalence, there is much work to be done nationwide to curb these statistics.

This report will hopefully go a long way in helping create a more addiction-friendly program to eventually help defeat this epidemic.