His. Joe Manchin
Senator Joe ManchinGOP launches Biden proposal to raise corporate tax rate. Filibuster can be conquered: I know, I helped to do it Lawmakers say solving the border crisis is Biden’s job MORE (DW.V.) on Monday filed an investigation in Congress at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to examine an HIV outbreak in Kanawha County, in its state.
ABC News reports that Manchin requested the investigation on behalf of the Kanawha County Commission after CDC warned that the HIV outbreak was “the most worrying in the United States.” Between 2014 and 2019, HIV cases in West Virginia attributed to intravenous drug use increased more than 50 percent, from 12.5 percent to 64.2 percent, ABC reported. News.
Kent Carper, chairman of the Kanawha County Commission, said in a statement that the outbreak “is a major public health issue and deserves our full understanding.”
During a February meeting with the county’s HIV working group, CDC’s head of HIV prevention, Demetre Daskalakis, warned that current figures could represent “the tip of the iceberg.”
“There are probably many more undiagnosed cases in the community. We are concerned that transmission is underway and that the number of people living with HIV will continue to increase if no urgent action is taken, ”Daskalakis said.
The outbreak, which focuses primarily on Charleston and Huntington, has been partly attributed to the cancellation of a needle exchange program in 2018 that offered drug users who could not stop smoking clean needles. .
Charleston City Council is currently considering an ordinance restricting local needle exchange programs, ABC News reported. Sarah Stone, co-founder of Solutions Oriented Addiction Response (SOAR), which provides clean needles in Charleston, told ABC News that the ordinance would close similar programs.