Narcan doses donated:

Two pharmaceutical companies are donating 5,000 doses of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone to public health officials in Illinois and in McHenry County. The Illinois Department of Public Health received 4,000 of the doses Thursday from Crystal-Lake based AptarGroup and Pennsylvania-based Adapt Pharma. The same two companies donated another 1,000 doses Friday to the McHenry County Substance Abuse Coalition. The firms gave nasal spray doses of naloxone, which are sold as Narcan. The drug works to reverse the life-threatening symptoms of opioid overdoses by knocking opioids off the receptors they stimulate in the brain and allowing the patient to breathe again. The doses the state received will go primarily to state police and the Department of Corrections, and 600 of them will be given to the Chicago Recovery Alliance.