HIV Is Spreading in West Virginia. The Solution Is in Short Supply
Since the beginning of 2018, 55 new cases of HIV have been reported in Cabell County, which includes Huntington, according to state health officials. Nearly all of the infections were transmitted through injection drug use. Previously, the county averaged eight cases a year.
2 Jul 2019HIV cases are surging in Huntington, West Virginia, a city already ravaged by the opioid epidemic. Experts worry that the virus could proliferate farther still—particularly since Charleston, the state capital an hour away, shut down its syringe exchange last year. The move restricted access not only to clean needles but to HIV testing as well.
“It’s the looming disaster that we were all afraid of,” says Dr. Judith Feinberg, a professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine. “It’s hard enough to deal with the disease of addiction. And now they have HIV on top of it. It didn’t have to be that way.”
A Dramatic Uptick
Since the beginning of 2018, 55 new cases of HIV have been reported in Cabell County, which includes Huntington, according to state health officials. Nearly all of the infections were transmitted through injection drug use. Previously, the county averaged eight cases a year.
Though HIV rates have been historically low in West Virginia, public health experts have long warned that the soaring drug use and relatively few HIV surveillance resources in many Appalachian counties could prove a lethal combination. After the 2015 HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the counties at the highest risk of future outbreaks based on the prevalence of drug overdoses, insurance coverage, health facilities, and a number of other indicators. Half the counties in West Virginia made the list.
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