HIV outbreak spreads across US - Obama administration scrambles to control it

Can the epidemic be slowed?

The United States enters a prescription opioid and heroin epidemic while the Obama Administration attempts to control it.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Guardian reported an alarming increase in an ongoing HIV outbreak across the United States.

The primary reason for the spread? Injection drug users sharing needles.

The correlation between drug users and HIV outbreaks indicate specific areas are more prone to witness the worst of the epidemic.

Ardis Hoven, an infectious disease specialist, explained: "For many years this was an urban issue, an inner-city issue, but what we learned from southern Indiana is that rural parts of our country are now at significant risk.

"If you look at these areas, the uniqueness is not only the poverty, not only the issue of unemployment and early teen births and educational issues, but the cultural issues embedded in many of those areas."

CDC epidemiologist John Brooks explained: "If we don't begin to think about how we could prevent [the spread] from happening again, it could really erode our success" with controlling the outbreak.

After acknowledging concerns, the White House released a statement calling for Congress to provide resources to treat the issue:

"As Congress moves to conference on legislation related to the prescription opioid and heroin epidemic, the Obama Administration is taking additional actions to expand access to treatment, strengthen prescription drug monitoring, enable safe disposal of unneeded drugs, and accelerate research on pain and opioid misuse and overdose.

"The President has made clear that addressing this epidemic is a priority for his Administration.  While Federal agencies have been using their authority to take every available action they can, Congress needs to take action on what is most urgently needed now - additional funding to make lifesaving treatment available to everyone who seeks it."

To view the government's plan to utilize $1.1 billion in "new funding" to "help Americans who want treatment and get it wherever they live," click here.

Meanwhile, Kentucky resident Donald Davis co-founded the Harm Reduction Kentucky program, which exchanges clean needles with contaminated ones.

Davis admitted their program doesn't help people stop abusing drugs but at least it slows the spread of HIV. Unfortunately, the spread of the program is slow-going: "There are small towns [in Kentucky] where everyone knows everybody, everyone is having unprotected sex together, but there are no syringe exchanges, no harm reduction programs, in those particular counties and in a lot of other countries in Kentucky."

Holly Hagan, the co-director of New York University's Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, believes an outbreak in other counties the CDC has identified as vulnerable may occur before the government can enact any preventative programs.

"It's reached into areas where there was really little cause for concern for HIV epidemics in the past. It was like a community that was poised for the introduction of HIV; once someone entered, there was very little to stop it."

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