Dr Steven Fox, CEO and chairman of biopharmaceutical company Akelos speaks to EPM about how his company wants to tackle the opioid epidemic through the development of non-addictive drugs.
In 2017 the US department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared the country to be in the midst of an opioid crisis. In doing so it confirmed what many already knew: that for over 20 years, the US healthcare system has been gripped in an epidemic that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients.
The US has a long history of opioid abuse, with soldiers in the Civil War experiencing addiction after being administered morphine for injuries. More recently the country has been in the throes of an opioid crisis so severe, it’s estimated to have killed over 200,000 Americans between 1999-2017 - and that’s only from prescription opioids.