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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Dozens of volunteers formed the letters ‘HIV SOS’ at a health event on Saturday as activists demand a declaration of a public health emergency in a city with the one of the country’s highest peaks of such cases.
Kanawha County, which includes Charleston and has a population of 178,000, had two cases of intravenous drug-related HIV in 2018. The number rose to 15 in 2019 and 39 last year, according to data from the ‘State. There have been 14 such cases so far in 2021.
After volunteers wearing red T-shirts appealed for help along the Kanawha River near downtown Charleston, Joe Solomon, co-founder of the nonprofit Solutions Oriented Addiction Response, a called on City Council and Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin to take action on the HIV crisis and prescription painkiller overdoses.
“In Charleston and Kanawha County, there is a family slaughtered by the overdose crisis every other day,” Solomon said. “All we are asking is that they take a day to declare a public health emergency. We have to treat this as the emergency it is.”
Earlier this year, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, CDC chief of HIV prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the Kanawha County epidemic “the most serious in the United States.” He warned that it could take years to weather the wave and that the number of cases “may be the tip of the iceberg.”
Earlier this week, the CDC presented the preliminary results of an investigation that showed emergency departments and inpatient medical staff in Kanawha County rarely perform HIV tests on intravenous drug addicts. .
Republican Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill in April to introduce stricter requirements for needle exchange programs like those offered by Solomon’s group. The move came over objections from critics who said it would restrict access to clean needles amid the surge in HIV cases.
The bill requires licenses for syringe collection and distribution programs. Operators should offer a range of outreach health services, including overdose prevention education and referrals to drug treatment programs. Participants must also present an ID card to obtain a syringe. Defenders see the regulations as onerous.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint against the new law on Friday.
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