By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
People seeking help for drug use will be able to carry on using pharmacies in Nottingham to get heroin substitutes after the council renewed funding for the service.
The council pays community pharmacists to deliver opioid substitution therapy (OST) for drug users.
The scheme helps people who become dependent on heroin or other illegal opioids by prescribing them a replacement drug.
Users take each dose under the supervision of a medical professional.
However, there was a risk this supervised service would have been unavailable while a new and more efficient way of working is established.
There are more than 50 pharmacy branches across the city which provide the service.
Community pharmacists can join the scheme at any time and will now be able to continue doing so.
The service is particularly valuable for people who “struggle to get into city centre locations”, the council says.
During a commissioning and procurement committee meeting on November 15 Cllr Linda Woodings (Lab), the council’s portfolio holder for adult social care and health, said: “What we have found with the vaccination roll-out pharmacists are so much more accessible.
“It is a model that works.”
The therapy aims to reduce drug use, injecting, overdose deaths, and related crime.
It also maintains a user’s tolerance for an opioid while reducing withdrawal symptoms and cravings.
The aim is to give people the chance to concentrate on their broader recovery and prevent overdoses.
The overall contract was due to end on March 31 next year, but the council has extended it by three months at a cost of £65,000.
The plan is to continue running the scheme between April 1 and June 30, 2023, until it can be integrated within the council’s wider drug treatment and recovery services.
If the contract was not extended there may have been a gap while another system was put in place.
Long-term, the council wants to better plan the service so it becomes part of the city’s overall alcohol and drug treatment and recovery services.
The council has designated £2,624,103 towards the contract for nine years, when the treatment and use of pharmacists should then sit within the services.
“Essentially we are extending for a short period this accreditation period so we can integrate after that in a planned way with the wider landscape of support,” said Cllr Adele Williams (Lab), who sits as the chairwoman of the committee.
“It seems a really sensible approach.”
