Local cases of hepatitis C and heroin overdoses are increasing at rates that have Monroe County health officials exploring the possibility of implementing a needle exchange program.
Rising rates of hepatitis C were how health officials in Scott County discovered a human immunodeficiency virus outbreak that resulted in Gov. Mike Pence declaring a public health state of emergency. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
“It’s not a southern Indiana problem. It’s not an Indiana problem. It’s a national problem,” said Penny Caudill, administrator at the Monroe County Health Department. “What happened in Scott County and southern Indiana has really just awakened the conversation.”
Heroin overdoses at IU Health Bloomington Hospital jumped significantly from 2013 to 2014, the county health department reported. And hepatitis C cases in Monroe County showed a major increase from 2009 to 2014, according to data from the Indiana State Department of Health. Actual numbers of cases for either category were not disclosed at the meeting, but Monroe County ranks seventh among the state’s 92 counties in a scoring system officials use to track cocaine and heroin abuse.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that most new cases of hepatitis C are the result of injection drug use, and 80 percent of people with HIV are co-infected with hepatitis C.
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