HIV, hepatitis C running rampant in Appalachian states

Dirty drug needles aren’t just an urban problem any more.

Drug users across Scott County, Ind., are testing HIV-positive as one of the worst American outbreaks of the disease continues to spread. Two hundred miles south, Kentucky struggles to guard against a similar disaster.

“We have to change the way we think,” said Sue Yates, a supervisor of Kentucky’s drug court programs. Kentucky has the nation’s highest rate of acute hepatitis C, largely caused by using dirty needles, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Injection drug addicts spread both HIV and hepatitis C by sharing bloodstained needles. Usually drug experts find the diseases in cities. But in 2012 alone, four Appalachian states recorded 618 cases of hepatitis C. Thousands of rural youth are falling to both hepatitis C and HIV.

James Quigley, director of a drug rehab center in North Carolina, said the increase in hepatitis C could be linked to a change in the type of drugs people living in rural communities use. Drug addicts used to snort meth. But Quigley’s seen an increase in Kentucky addicts looking for opiates, drugs usually injected into the veins.

“They have ready access to doctors that are willing to prescribe opiates,” Quigley said, adding that the outbreak of HIV cases didn’t “surprise me at all.” If these drug addicts use clean needles, diseases like HIV and hepatitis C are less likely to spread, according to a World Health Organization study.

Drug addicts usually buy and sell their needles on the streets for around $5. Needle exchange programs offer clean needles for free. While they can prevent outbreaks of disease, some groups object to these programs, unwilling to drop a zero-tolerance policy toward drugs.

Four states are facing a major outbreak caused by dirty needles—Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Kentucky became the first of the four affected states to pass a law allowing local groups to provide drug users with clean needles. But individual counties still have to decide to implement the programs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.