Police officers in a suburban Philadelphia county will soon be the first in the world to carry a newly approved easy-to-administer version of the drug that reverses heroin and prescription painkiller overdoses.
The district attorney and police chiefs from Delaware County discussed the decision to equip officers with naloxone in a easier to use nasal spray form at a news conference Friday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the new version of the life-saving drug known generically as naloxone in November.
The nasal spray is being distributed by Adapt Pharma Inc., which is in Delaware County. A company spokesman confirms the county is its first customer for the spray.
Naloxone was previously approved only in injectable forms, though the FDA says first responders have widely used atomizers to convert it into a spray.
