Her. Joe Manchin
Joe Manchin GOP Senator Hammers Biden Proposal To Increase Corporate Tax Rate The Filibuster Can Be Overcome: I Know – I Helped It Lawmakers Say Solving Border Crisis Is Biden’s Job MORE (DW.V.) on Monday filed a congressional inquiry with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate an HIV outbreak in Kanawha County, his state.
ABC News reports that Manchin filed for the investigation on behalf of the Kanawha County Commission after the CDC warned that the HIV outbreak was “the most concerning in the United States.” Between 2014 and 2019, HIV cases in West Virginia 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.”
At a February meeting with the county’s HIV task force, Demetre Daskalakis, the CDC’s head of HIV prevention, warned that the current numbers could represent “ the tip of the iceberg. ”
“There are probably many more undiagnosed cases in the community. We are concerned that the transmission is underway and that the number of people living with HIV will continue to increase unless urgent action is taken, ”said Daskalakis.
The outbreak, which has mainly focused around Charleston and Huntington, is attributed in part to the cancellation of a needle exchange program in 2018 that offered drug users with clean needles that couldn’t stop.
Charleston City Council is currently considering an ordinance that would restrict local needle exchange programs, ABC News reported. Sarah Stone, co-founder of Solutions Oriented Addiction Response (SOAR), which delivers clean needles in Charleston, told ABC News the ordinance would shut down similar programs.