Staff graphc by Stewart Moon
Staff graphc by Stewart Moon
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Public health officials say that signs of an emerging health crisis were visible in southern Indiana long before Gov. Mike Pence declared an HIV epidemic in Scott County.
They point to rising hepatitis C infection rates among injection drug users, who contract the disease mostly from sharing used needles. Overdose deaths from nonmedical use of prescription opioids have increased. And more doctors are using the drug that stops the effects of an overdose before it can claim a life.
“It’s not a Scott County problem” is the phrase the governor and health care workers have used again and again to describe the result of decades of physicians overprescribing painkillers. It’s a nationwide problem. It’s an Indiana problem. And, data show, it’s a Monroe County problem.
During the past five years, mandatorily reported hepatitis C cases in Monroe County have increased 83 percent, from 76 cases reported in 2009 to 139 reported to the Indiana State Department of Health in 2014.
From 1999 to 2010, drug overdose deaths in Indiana have quadrupled, according to the Trust for America’s Health. In Monroe County, heroin poisoning resulting in trips to IU Health Bloomington Hospital have increased by more than 50 percent every year for the past three years, from nine in 2012 to 31 in 2013, 48 in 2014 and 37 through June 30 of this year, according to hospital data. The hospital predicts there will be a total of 74 emergency room visits due to heroin poisoning before the end of 2015.
The 15th-worst state for overdoses in the nation, Indiana’s drug-induced death rates are higher than deaths by motor vehicle accidents, deaths by firearms or deaths by suicide, according to the trust. And it all started with a scale of one to 10.
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