Excerpt
SUMMARY: A rural region of Indiana has become the center of the state's worst-ever HIV epidemic. For the first time, that state's legislature passed a bill this week allowing drug users in high-risk areas to trade used needles for clean ones. In collaboration with Kaiser Health News, special correspondent Sarah Varney reports on how health officials, lawmakers and residents are grappling with the crisis.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In a first for Indiana, the state’s legislature this week passed a bill permitting drug users in areas with health outbreaks to trade used needles for clean ones. It’s in response to an HIV outbreak of historic proportions.
Sarah Varney has our report from Austin, Indiana, near the Kentucky border.
This story was produced in collaboration with our partner, Kaiser Health News.
WOMAN: Jesus loves you, you know.
SARAH VARNEY, Kaiser Health News: Local churches in Austin, Indiana, have taken to the streets to reclaim their neighborhoods from a drug-fueled HIV epidemic that has decimated this all-American town.
Over the last month, this prayer walk has grown from a handful to hundreds. Austin is a largely white town of some 4,000 people, proud of its country roots and manufacturing plants that have held on despite hard times and growing poverty. It’s a place where everyone knows everyone else, but few families have escaped drug addiction.
HIV cases had been few and far between in this rural patch of southern Indiana. But, in January, the number of confirmed cases jumped to 11, then to 40, and now more than 140 people are infected. It’s the largest HIV outbreak in Indiana’s history and the largest seen in rural America in many years.
Dr. William Cooke is Austin’s only physician. He says the conditions for an outbreak have been ripe for a decade.
DR. WILLIAM COOKE, Foundations Family Medicine: We had a high incidence of drug use. That started off as just painkillers, people sharing their prescriptions with each other, buying prescriptions, that sort of thing. And then somewhere around 2010, 2011, that took a turn towards I.V. drug use.
SARAH VARNEY: A prescription painkiller called Opana had been reformulated, and addicts found they now needed to inject it to reach a euphoric high.
DR. WILLIAM COOKE: In the county, it wasn’t surprising that HIV came in next.
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