Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment (a) Public Health England and (b) NICE have made of the current provision, availability and use of Naloxone in community settings for the treatment of drug overdose; and what commissioning guidance each such body has issued for this drug.

The Government has accepted the advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs that naloxone needs to be more widely available. The Human Medicines (Amendment) (No.3) Regulations 2015 which come into effect on 1 October underpin the implementation of that decision.

Public Health England (PHE) provides support to local authorities to carry out a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) in their local area each year. JSNAs identify the current and future health and care needs of the local population, including drug treatment services, and help build a robust evidence base of local needs.

The drugs harm interventions section of the PHE Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco Joint Strategic Needs Assessment support pack (http://www.nta.nhs.uk/healthcare-JSNA.aspx) includes a checklist of questions for commissioners to consider. The checklist is titled ‘What questions should you ask to check you are following the evidence and best practice that supports the principle?’ and includes the question “Are effective overdose-awareness training and information, and naloxone provided for service users and their family/carers?”.

In February 2015, PHE published advice for commissioners and providers on the provision of naloxone, so that commissioners and providers could take action to widen the availability of naloxone:

http://www.nta.nhs.uk/uploads/phetake-homenaloxoneforopioidoverdosefeb2015rev.pdf

The role of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is to provide evidence based guidance, advice, quality standards and information services for the health, public health and social care sectors. It does not have responsibility for assessing the current provision, availability or use of medicines or treatments. We understand there are no plans to ask NICE to develop commissioning guidance on naloxone to treat opioid overdoses.