HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Huntington Mayor Steve Williams says the city is looking forward to launching a syringe exchange program by Oct. 1.
“I think we did an effective job of letting folks know that this isn’t just needle exchange. This is the first step of being able to save lives and help people find a way toward recovery,” said Williams.
The first-of-its-kind pilot project in West Virginia will involve education and treatment resources along with efforts to stop the spread of infectious diseases through needle exchanges by giving addicts points of contact within the Cabell-Huntington Health Department.
A recent study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found hepatitis C cases across four Appalachian states—West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia—more than tripled between 2006 and 2012.
In 2012, West Virginia had the second-highest rate of hepatitis C in the entire country, according to the CDC.
“Is the problem so pervasive that we’re too late?” Williams said. “That becomes really frightening. We might find that just having it only at the health department isn’t enough, that it needs to be in other locations.”
Williams said he’s not afraid the program will fail, necessarily, because it currently only stems from one location in West Virginia.
“If we do this locally and we find that there’s some things that aren’t working, guess what? Because it’s local, we can react quicker and act sooner to be able to fix it,” he said.
Last month, the state Department of Health and Human Resources put $20,000 into the program. Half the funds went to the program itself and the other half went toward technical support for the syringe exchanges, or SEP, designed to reduce illnesses and infections like hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV that are spread through drug use.
“The key is that we will have physicians and nurses present and as they start to develop that trust with that person who is fighting the addiction then our research shows, in the first year, about half of the individuals start seeking treatment,” Williams said.
Though treatment facilities are available in Huntington to those people who need it, Williams said he worries about a lack of beds elsewhere in the state.
“People in all other counties are coming to Huntington,” he said. “If we could have other beds centrally located elsewhere then that would take that pressure off locally.”
“There has to be aggressive leadership throughout the state on this.”