Sen. Joe Manchin
Joe ManchinGOP Senator hammers Biden’s proposal to increase corporate tax rate Obstruction can be conquered: I know – I helped do that Lawmakers say fixing the border crisis is Biden’s job MORE (DW.V.) submitted a parliamentary inquiry on Monday to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate an HIV outbreak in Kanawha County in its state.
ABC News reports that Manchin requested the inquiry on behalf of the Kanawha County Commission after the CDC warned that the HIV outbreak was “the most worrying in the United States”. Between 2014 and 2019, HIV cases in West Virginia that were attributed to intravenous drug use increased by more than 50 percent from 12.5 percent to 64.2 percent, ABC News reported.
Kent Carper, chairman of the Kanawha County Commission, said in a statement that the outbreak “is a major public health problem and deserves our full understanding”.
During a meeting in February with the county HIV task force, the CDC’s HIV prevention chief, Demetre Daskalakis, warned that the current figures could represent “the tip of the iceberg”.
“There are probably many more undiagnosed cases in the community. We are concerned that transmission will continue and that the number of people with HIV will continue to increase unless urgent measures are taken, “said Daskalakis.
The outbreak, which focuses mainly on Charleston and Huntington, was partly attributed to the cancellation of a syringe exchange program in 2018 that offered clean needles to drug users who were unable to stop.
Charleston City Council is currently considering a law that would restrict local needle exchange programs, ABC News reported. Sarah Stone, co-founder of Solutions Oriented Addiction Response (SOAR), which supplies clean needles in Charleston, told ABC News that the decree would end similar programs.