WVU in the News: A new WV law closed Mercer County’s needle exchange. What happens next?
Every Thursday afternoon for the past two years, dozens of people made their weekly pilgrimage to a nondescript meeting room at the Mercer County Health Department. There, behind a set of double doors, county health professionals ran the area’s only needle exchange — offering disease testing, counseling and clean needles to stop the spread of infectious diseases among people who use drugs.
And though it hadn’t been around for very long, the program seemed to be working: hepatitis C infection rates were down, as were complaints of needle litter. Substance use disorder professionals said they saw more people enter treatment.
But now without a needle exchange, county officials fear hepatitis C rates will rise again — and that this time HIV may come with it.
Robin Pollini, an infectious disease specialist and professor at West Virginia University’s School of Medicine [and School of Public Health], warned that hepatitis C outbreaks could be a “canary in the coal mine” for a future HIV outbreak among people who use drugs.