Everyday Americans 3: Opioids and the Next Generation

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2018

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Louisville, Kentucky, drug overdose related deaths are twice the national average. What will the impact be on the next generation? This fly-on the-wall documentary series follows the work of a team of reporters from the Louisville Courier Journal. We hear of babies born addicted as a result of their mothers’ drug use, an inspiring school choir and the families finding ways to face up to the epidemic. A mother is campaigning to hold pharmaceutical companies to account and citizens, faith groups and politicians are responding to the crisis.

Transcript

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0:17.0	There's the papers coming out of the press. I'm Rick Green, editor of the Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Over the past six weeks, the BBC has been following us as we cover one of the most serious problems America
0:24.0	faces today, the opioid epidemic. What you're about to hear is our journalists
0:28.6	following the story as it unfolds. This is Norton Women's and Children's Hospital.
0:39.3	It's Friday the 14th of September.
0:42.4	I'm Laura Unger, investigative reporter with the Courier Journal.
0:45.2	I'm working on a story about babies who are born withdrawing from drugs. My name is Dawn Forbes and I am a neonatologist. I take care of sick babies that are in the
1:06.2	ICU after they're born, so the neonatal ICU.
1:18.3	Newborn babies are not born addicted that is a common misnomer but addiction is a complex and complicated disease it has multiple facets to it so babies babies are not born addicted. They're not drug babies.
1:25.3	There are infants that were exposed to a substance in utero. That exposure if long enough led to a dependency and because they became dependent on that
1:35.0	substance once they are born and they no longer have that substance being provided
1:39.3	they become at risk of going through withdrawal. And what sorts of withdrawal symptoms do babies have?
1:45.0	So babies have the same withdrawal symptoms as adult.
1:48.0	They have symptoms that affect their GI systems, so vomiting, diarrhea, excessive volume loss. They have respiratory
1:55.9	symptoms so they breathe fast, they have difficulty breathing, so retractions
1:59.9	and grunting and what we call tokypnea which is just fast breathing.
2:04.0	They also have temperature instability.
2:05.8	These kids tend to run hot, but the categories that we worry about are the ones that are
2:10.0	going to compromise their well-being.
2:12.0	So if babies are inconsolable and crying, that is,
2:15.2	babies don't handle that. You and I can cry for hours and days and we'll be fine. Babies can't
2:19.9	cry for hours because as they cry for hours they become physically exhausted and
2:23.8	that leads them to actually start having symptoms of really being sick. Babies
	...

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