At first, the man appears drunk.

He’s walking along an on-ramp from Lackman Road onto Interstate 435, a major highway snaking through the Kansas City metro area. At 1 p.m., traffic is heavy.

The man doesn’t react well when a police officer arrives.

In February 2015, my village of Homa Bay County in Kenya experienced a cholera outbreak, claiming the lives of 17 people and affecting nearly 700 others. It was not our first cholera outbreak but it took a devastating toll, not just in my village but in nearby communities, too. As an epidemiologist and a public health professional, I was struck at the lack of capacity to rapidly detect the outbreak and contain its spread. Cholera’s symptoms are generally well understood making it easier to diagnose and treat than many diseases, but even still it took a deadly toll.

At a recent Public Safety Committee meeting of the Board of Aldermen, University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist Rick Rosenfeld suggested members of the St. Louis Fire Department may be needed to help fight crime in the city. Rosenfeld suggested that in the “down time between fires,” firefighters and medics should walk patrols in high-density areas, ensure buildings were secured, and make random checks on unoccupied vehicles.

Overdosing on heroin or another opiate? Soon, there could be an app for that.

The federal government is hosting a competition -- a call for innovators who can develop a mobile phone application that will help a person having or witnessing an opioid or heroin overdose get the quickest access to the drug naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, which can reverse the overdose.

The competition seeks to align public health forces with technology experts as communities North of Boston and across the nation remain in the grip of a heroin and opioid epidemic.

The RCMP released a video that highlights some of the dangers Fentanyl and other opioids pose to first responders and the public. Featuring real life stories of RCMP officers who came into contact with Fentanyl while on duty, it is a sober reminder that anyone can be affected by this drug without even using it.

An increase in overdoses and deaths related to Fentanyl use is spreading across Canada and is one of the reasons the RCMP is choosing to release this video publicly; as a reminder that we all should exercise caution.