Schaumburg patrol officers will treat heroin overdoses

Schaumburg police this week have joined a proven DuPage County program which provides patrol officers with a drug and proper training to help save heroin overdose victims before paramedics arrive.

Since it began nearly a year ago, the DuPage County Opioid Overdose Prevention Program has already racked up 13 reported saves of people going into heroin overdose, Schaumburg police Sgt. John Nebl said.

By joining the program, every Schaumburg squad car will be equipped with a dose of the drug Naloxone - also called Narcan - which counteracts the depressive effect of heroin on the body's systems that can cause death in the event of an overdose.

Since 2011, there have been 26 nonfatal overdoses and 22 heroin-related deaths in the village, Nebl said.

The Narcan that will be kept in each squad car is administered in the form of a nasal spray, and not an injection as most people assume, Nebl said.

The Schaumburg Police Department will send an officer to DuPage to be trained as a trainer in the use of Narcan. The rest of the department's patrol officers will then learn from that in-house trainer.

Though only a relatively small part of Schaumburg is in DuPage County, the police department decided to join a program already up and running with a proven track record rather than to try to implement its own program from scratch, Nebl said.

The program is expected to be in full effect in Schaumburg in the near future.