Indiana has spent $2 million thus far to contain HIV outbreak in Scott County

“We literally have new cases being reported every day, literally on an hourly basis,” State Health Commissioner Jerome Adams said in a telephone media briefing this morning.

Through Gov. Mike Pence’s executive order extending a state health emergency through May 24, the state has allocated $2.1 million thus far to contain the outbreak. Additional funding to aid the crisis response has come from universities, drug companies and private groups and foundations.

“We all pay the price when we don’t sufficiently invest in public health, and I think this is an effect of that,” Adams said. “Everyone would always love more money, but there’s a finite pie. We must figure out how to best use the resources we have.”

The conditions in Scott County are reflected in national injection drug use trends, said Jonathan Mermin, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.

New HIV cases directly tied to injection drug use have decreased 90 percent since its peak in the late 1980s. However, rates of prescription for opioid painkillers quadrupled from 1999 to 2011, which has coincided with a 150 percent increase in reports of hepatitis C virus nationwide from 2010 to 2013, as well as increasing overdose deaths.

“This outbreak we’re seeing in Indiana is really a tip of an iceberg of a drug abuse problem we’re seeing in the United States, not only causing problems because of abuse of drugs, but putting people at high risk of infectious diseases,” Mermin said. “The situation in Indiana should serve as a warning that we cannot let down our guard amongst these deadly infections.”