Boston-area paramedics on front lines of U.S. opioid crisis

A Cataldo Ambulance medic holds used doses of naloxone after medics revived a man in his 40's who was found unresponsive from an opioid overdose in the Boston suburb of Salem, Massachusetts, U.S., August 9, 2017. The victim received a total of 12mg of naloxone. Nurses at the hospital recognised the man, saying he was brought in the day before after overdosing. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

(Reuters) - The paramedics find them everywhere - slumped over car steering wheels, barely breathing in doughnut shop bathrooms or dead in derelict apartments and expensive mansions.

For the Cataldo Ambulance Service crews outside Boston on the front lines of the U.S. opioid epidemic, the flood of overdose calls is a grim daily reality, despite expanded access to overdose reversal drugs.