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Take-home naloxone programs and calls to emergency services

Amy Kirwan, Michael Curtis, Ingrid A van Beek, Kate Cantwell and Paul M Dietze
Med J Aust 2016; 204 (4): . || doi: 10.5694/mja15.00783
Published online: 7 March 2016

Updated advice to be given by Triple Zero call-takers is being developed

In May 2012, Australia’s first take-home naloxone program for opioid overdose prevention commenced in the Australian Capital Territory1; it was soon followed by programs in other jurisdictions. Current Australian naloxone training programs cover calling an ambulance, administering naloxone and giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Some training programs are as short as 10 minutes, and others are as long as 2 hours, so capacity to present practical emergency management scenarios, including calls to emergency services, varies.


  • 1 Burnet Institute, Melbourne, VIC
  • 2 Kirketon Road Centre, Sydney, NSW
  • 3 Ambulance Victoria, Melbourne, VIC
  • 4 Monash University, Melbourne, VIC



Acknowledgements: 

We thank the members of the NNRG who contributed to this article. The NNRG is run under the auspices of the Centre for Research Excellence into Injecting Drug Use (National Health and Medical Research Council [NHMRC] grant number 1001144). This work was supported by the Victorian Operational Infrastructure Support Program, which provides funding to the Burnet Institute. Kate Cantwell was funded by an NHMRC Postgraduate Scholarship and Paul Dietze is funded by an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship.

Competing interests:

Ingrid van Beek is involved in the delivery of a take-home naloxone program. Paul Dietze has been the recipient of an untied educational grant from Reckitt Benckiser.

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