Subscribe Place Ad Buy Trib Photos Readers' Choice Contests
Jobs Homes Autos Classifieds
Trib Total Media Contact Us
Officials: Allegheny County overdose deaths dropped significantly last year | TribLIVE.com
Allegheny

Officials: Allegheny County overdose deaths dropped significantly last year

Nicole C. Brambila
Nicole C. Brambila
1336789_web1_ptr-overdose1-06252019

Accidental overdose deaths in Allegheny County dropped 41% last year, according to the medical examiner’s office.

Accidental overdoses claimed 432 people in 2018 compared to 737 in 2017, according to county data. This marks the fewest deaths over the past three years. In 2016, 650 people died from an overdose.

“While we have a lot more work to do, the 41% reduction in deaths reflects that we are moving in the right direction,” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said in a statement Tuesday.

While the number of overdose deaths declined, the demographics hardest hit are similar to previous years with 68% of the victims being male and 94% white. The deaths largely come from the following age groups: 25 to 34; 35 to 44; and 45 to 54. These age groups account for nearly three in four deaths.

Fentanyl remains the most common drug mixture, followed by heroin and cocaine.

“The sharp decline in overdose deaths in 2018 is a pleasant and largely unexpected event,” Allegheny County Medical Examiner Dr. Karl Williams said in a statement.

Williams credited the availability of naloxone, which blocks the effects of opioids, especially with an overdose.

A 2014 state law allowed law enforcement, firefighters, EMS and other organizations to administer naloxone. In 2018, the county Health Department trained more than 2,000 people on administrating naloxone and distributed more than 8,000 naloxone kits.

County officials also attributed the declining deaths to better data collection, which wasn’t being done in several counties just five years ago.

“Opioid overdose deaths have taken so many lives and we mourn their loss,” Health Department Director Dr. Karen Hacker said in a statement. “We have worked hard to stem the tide of this deadly epidemic and seeing impact is rewarding; however, we know that we cannot take our feet off the gas.”’

Earlier in the year, the county health department had reported 379 overdoses in 2018, but then-pending toxicology tests pushed that number past 400.

The opioid epidemic began with the sharp rise of prescriptions in the early 1990s and a rapid increase in overdose deaths about a decade ago.

Nicole C. Brambila is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Nicole at 724-226-7704, [email protected] or via Twitter .

TribLIVE commenting policy

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.