International Overdose Awareness Day

29 July 2026

As clinicians working across the board are aware, drug use is increasing. This is due to multiple factors, including polysubstance drug use (which can have unanticipated interactions) and the increasing development and availability of novel drugs, including opioids. This class of drugs is the cause of more than two-thirds of overdose deaths. In my cases use of these drugs starts with a prescription.

Monday 31 August is the 25th anniversary of the first International Overdose Awareness Day, a project that began as a memorial barbeque event at the Salvation Army needle exchange in Melbourne in 2001. In the quarter decade since then, the focus of International Overdose Awareness Day has broadened from remembrance and is now an opportunity to raise awareness, reduce stigma, promote overdose prevention, and support people affected by overdose – including grieving friends and family.

International Overdose Awareness Day promotes compassionate, person-centred care and challenges stigma surrounding substance use. Stigma can prevent people from seeking treatment, carrying naloxone, or disclosing drug use to healthcare providers.

A significant public health issue

Overdose is a significant public health issue. Drug-induced death was the second leading cause of death for Australian men aged 30–39 and the third leading cause for women the same age in 2022, with 2,356 deaths across the country that year – or over six deaths per day. Australia’s population increased by 20.4 per cent in the two decades from since 2002 but the number of unintentional drug-induced deaths increased by 108 per cent for the same period. [1]

At both a Branch and Federal level, ANMF believes alcohol and substance use should be viewed as medical and social rather than criminal matters, as we know that outlawing some drugs and penalising substance use does not reduce the negative effects on people or communities. Meanwhile, harm-minimisation programs like the Melbourne Safe Injecting Room, pill testing, and needle and syringe exchange programs (NSP) reduce death, debility and health conditions including transmission of blood-borne viruses and subacute bacterial endocarditis.

Nurses and midwives play a critical role in overdose prevention, and are often the health professionals most likely to:

identify patients at risk of overdose
educate patients and families about overdose risks
promote safer use practices and harm reduction
recognise overdose symptoms early
administer or facilitate access to naloxone.

Victorian nurses and midwives should be aware that naloxone can temporarily reverse opioid overdose. It can be given as a nasal spray or injection and may be administered by non-clinicians. Victoria’s Take-Home Naloxone Program provides free access to naloxone through participating services and pharmacies. In an overdose emergency, naloxone should be administered and 000 called immediately. This is because the half-life of naloxone is shorter than the half-life of opiates, which means a person can regain consciousness following overdose, then overdose again without consuming anything else.

While most often associated with illicit drug use, overdose also occurs in clinical settings for reasons unrelated to non-prescription use. People at risk include:

patients prescribed opioids for acute or chronic pain
individuals receiving opioid substitution therapies (e.g. methadone)
elderly people, children, patients who are underweight, and people with liver and/or kidney dysfunction.

Risk factors include:

high-dose opioid prescriptions
concurrent benzodiazepine use
alcohol use with opioids
previous overdose history
recent release from prison or detoxification programs
chronic respiratory disease
sleep apnoea
reduced opioid tolerance after abstinence.

Midwives may encounter overdose risks among:

pregnant people with opioid dependence
people receiving opioid replacement therapy
patients prescribed opioids following caesarean section or other procedures
families affected by substance use disorders.

This means overdose risk may be encountered in hospitals, community health settings, maternity services, aged care, mental health services and primary care.

Victorian health authorities have warned about highly potent synthetic opioids, including nitazenes, which may be present in substances such as cocaine, ketamine and MDMA without the user’s knowledge. These substances can cause rapid and severe overdoses.

Nurses and midwives should maintain a high index of suspicion when assessing unexplained unconsciousness or respiratory depression.

Actions you can take: