Tuesday, 10 December 2013
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US: Louisiana Fuels HIV Epidemic
(New York, December 10, 2013) – Louisiana state laws and practises that prohibit access to sterile syringes and criminalize sex work contribute to an uncontrolled HIV epidemic and an extremely high AIDS death rate.
Louisiana has an estimated 45,000 people who inject drugs, a quarter of them in New Orleans. Yet the city has few services, such as syringe exchanges, shown to reduce HIV and hepatitis infections among injection drug users. The city’s one public syringe exchange receives no government funding and is open for only two hours a week. Because state criminal law prohibits possession of syringes for non-medical use, the exchange operates under a cloud of legal uncertainty. Volunteers from small “underground” exchanges risk arrest to deliver clean needles to people who need them, sometimes by bicycle.
The southern United States has the fastest-growing HIV epidemic and the largest number of people dying of AIDS of any region in the country. Louisiana’s two largest cities, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, have the second and third-highest rates of new HIV infection in the nation. In New Orleans, 40 percent of people with HIV are not receiving treatment.
Louisiana has an estimated 45,000 people who inject drugs, a quarter of them in New Orleans. Yet the city has few services, such as syringe exchanges, shown to reduce HIV and hepatitis infections among injection drug users. The city’s one public syringe exchange receives no government funding and is open for only two hours a week. Because state criminal law prohibits possession of syringes for non-medical use, the exchange operates under a cloud of legal uncertainty. Volunteers from small “underground” exchanges risk arrest to deliver clean needles to people who need them, sometimes by bicycle.
The southern United States has the fastest-growing HIV epidemic and the largest number of people dying of AIDS of any region in the country. Louisiana’s two largest cities, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, have the second and third-highest rates of new HIV infection in the nation. In New Orleans, 40 percent of people with HIV are not receiving treatment.
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