10:06am: Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval

CDC warns WV of HIV/hep C risks from needle sharing

Austin, Indiana, is known, unfortunately, as ground zero for the rapid spread of HIV and hepatitis C associated with needle-sharing by drug addicts.  The Wall Street Journal reports that 194 people in Scott County, about 30 miles north of Louisville, are infected.

After the outbreak last year, the Centers for Disease Control decided to study the characteristics of the region to try to identify the most at-risk counties in the country.  The CDC looked at things like the availability of prescription pain pills, overdose deaths, unemployment, income and education levels and came up with 220 counties.

The Journal reports that “Of the 220 counties—out of more than 3,100 in the U.S. and including Scott County—most are rural; 56 percent are in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, in the Appalachian region hardest hit by the opioid crisis.”

West Virginia has 28 counties on the list and ten in the top 50 of at-risk counties—Boone, Fayette, Hancock, Logan, McDowell, Mingo, Monroe, Morgan, Raleigh and Wyoming.  The CDC rates McDowell County, which has long struggled with joblessness and drug issues, as the second most vulnerable county to the rapid spread of HIV/hepatitis through needle sharing.

“I think this is a real wake-up call,” said Dr. Judith Feinberg, a professor in WVU’s School of Medicine.  “I think that the possibility this could happen here is quite real.”

If it did, the cost for care would be exorbitant. The Journal estimates that the lifetime cost of treating the nearly 200 infected residents of Scott County could approach $100 million.

Feinberg says one of the challenges is containing the diseases once they are introduced into a region.  “It’s extremely efficient to spread HIV through needle sharing,” she said on Talkline Tuesday.

Health officials and community leaders are scrambling to try to stay ahead of the problem with treatment programs, needle exchanges and quick response when an addict is diagnosed with HIV or hepatitis. “We need to be thinking about how this is different and working toward a comprehensive response strategy,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, commissioner for the Bureau of Public Health and the state’s health officer.

Not long ago, these were big city problems, but that’s now shifting to the countryside. According to the CDC report, “Since 2006, rates of acute HCV (hepatitis C virus infections) have increased faster in rural areas than urban areas consistent with introduction and spread of this infection into the populations made newly vulnerable by the expansion of IDU (intravenous drug use) in rural America.”

Unfortunately, areas that are economically depressed are the most at-risk, which makes many West Virginians particularly susceptible to dangerous addictions that will ruin their health and cast an additional financial burden on the state.





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