USA. We’ll Know Harm Reduction Is Mainstream Once Dr. Fauci Likes It
USA. We’ll Know Harm Reduction Is Mainstream Once Dr. Fauci Likes It
In 2018, the syringe service program (SSP) in Cabell County, West Virginia, was shuttered by the local health department. By January 2019, the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health was investigating a spike in HIV transmission.
The bureau stated in its April 2019 health advisory that while historically the main behavioral risk factor for HIV transmission was “male-to-male sexual contact,” in this case the virus was spreading among communities of people who inject drugs (PWID).
West Virginia’s HIV crisis among PWID spans multiple counties. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended urgently increasing access to SSP after investigating the Kanahwa County outbreak in 2021. By then, the state had already imposed the notoriously harmful restriction known as “one-to one,” which only allows SSP to distribute a fraction of the sterile syringes needed.
All this took place while Dr. Anthony Fauci was still the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), but he doesn’t appear interested in the well-established link between the outbreaks and the lack of sterile syringe access. (Filter, USA, 27.11.2023)