This International Overdose Awareness Day, Bendigo Community Health Services hope to remove the stigma and start a conversation around unintentional overdoses in the region.

Related: Penington Institute's annual report: overdose higher in the regions

Bendigo Community Health Services Mobile Drug Safety Worker Paul Morgan said when talking about an overdose, people might jump to stereotypes.

Mr Morgan said however it was often everyday workers who may unintentionally overdose on prescribed medications.

"Overdose deaths come from a section of the population that we don't really think of and that is in a lot of labor and agriculture workers," he said.

"The vast amount of people in the region would have been touched by an overdose death, I know of a number of overdose deaths in the past year or so and these are impacted a lot of people, especially their families and friends."

In Bendigo, the number of people unintentionally overdosing on legal and illicit drugs has risen to 47 over the five-year period from 2015 to 2019, according to the Penington Institute.

To combat this, Mr Morgan said BCHS have been providing free scripts of the drug, Naloxone which is an opioid overdose reversal medication.

"We are promoting the use of Naloxone, which is an opioid-based reversal agency which you can get it free of charge through Bendigo Community Health Services and you can also buy it over the counter in any pharmacy in Bendigo," he said.

"Naloxone can be injected or inhaled which will reverse an overdose, and we know with many overdose deaths or close to death are actually recovered because a friend or loved one has Naloxone, on them and can use it."

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Mr Morgan said the rising number of deaths would continue to rise and hoped the issue could start being looked at as a health crisis, instead of a criminal one.

"The number of deaths over the past 20 years, isn't going to decrease in the future and our community needs to think about whether the criminal justice system is the best way to manage drug dependence in the community or whether we should as a policy matter treat drug dependency as a health issue."

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