FL Gov. Rick Scott
Welcome to the Red State HIV Epidemic
Excerpt from “Republican governors face tough decisions as the disease spreads in middle America.” By ADAM WREN 2015
• It wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not in Austin, a one-doctor-and-an-ice-cream-shop town of 4,200 in southeastern Indiana, nestled off Interstate 65 on the road from Indianapolis to Louisville, where dusty storefronts sit vacant and many residents, lacking cars, walk to the local market. But it did.
• “This is an HIV outbreak in a rural setting that is linked to an injection drug use,” says Jennifer Walthall, Indiana’s deputy state health commissioner. “That hasn’t been seen in the U.S. to date.”
• As she travels the town, Brittany Combs, Scott County’s plainspoken public health nurse peers into the faces of the new rural red-state HIV epidemic: They are predominantly white, economically disadvantaged, and in their 30s. (Cases have been reported in adults as young as 18 and as old as 64, according to the state’s Joint Information Center).
• And they are often related: For some families here, shooting up Opana, a legal painkiller, has become something of an intergenerational pastime. “Sometimes two, or even three generations will all be IV drug users,” Combs says. “That’s one of the ways it spread so quickly: [People will say] ‘I only share [needles] with my family.’ They trusted them and shared needles with them. It’s pretty shocking.”
• This year, state legislators in Florida and Texas introduced pilot programs for needle exchange bills. In Florida, a pilot needle exchange bill that would be run by the University of Miami appears to be stalled as lawmakers enter a special budget session, and such legislation has never made it to the governor. The Miami area has seen some of the nation’s highest rates of new HIV infections in recent years, according to the CDC. Asked about Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s position on needle exchanges, a spokesperson said the governor would review any legislation that comes to his desk.
• “Over the last several years, people started injecting these painkillers and increasingly switching to heroin,” says Daniel Raymond, policy director for the Harm Reduction Coalition, which supports needle exchanges. “So a lot of red and purple states are now confronting rising hepatitis C rates and potential HIV outbreaks like the one in Scott County.”
“That will create an awareness that the HIV epidemic is not over.”
Editor’s Note: Many of these newly infected are part of the working poor in service and retail industries with no access to affordable health care.
Read more at Politico.
