The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must add West Virginia to its Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) initiative, said U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).
The EHE initiative, announced in 2019 to end the HIV epidemic in America by 2030, is designed to invest in communities most affected by HIV and to help local HIV programs recover, rebuild and begin to expand EHE strategies during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to HHS.
Neither West Virginia nor any of its 55 counties were included as Phase 1 jurisdictions of the EHE initiative, but they should be included now, according to a Sept. 21 letter Sen. Capito sent to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
“While I understand how and why the Phase 1 jurisdictions were chosen, since 2017 at least two West Virginia counties have had HIV outbreaks associated with injection drug use and a large number of additional counties are showing extreme vulnerability to rapid HIV spread for this same reason,” she wrote.
Sen. Capito noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2016 found 28 of West Virginia’s 55 counties were among the top U.S. communities potentially vulnerable to the rapid spread of HIV and new or continuing high rates of hepatitis C virus infections among those who inject drugs.
Since then, in fact, two of the 28 counties, Cabell County beginning in 2018 and Kanawha County beginning in 2019, have experienced HIV outbreaks among people who inject drugs, according to Sen. Capito’s letter.
“The CDC has been an invaluable partner in investigation and response of these outbreaks,” the lawmaker wrote. “However, part of the reason EHE was created was to encourage the collaboration among agencies and offices across HHS and to provide additional resources so that jurisdictions are able to appropriately diagnose, treat, prevent, and respond to HIV.”
Without inclusion in the EHE program, Sen. Capito wrote that she fears “West Virginia will be unable to address the root causes of these outbreaks and we will continue to see similar outbreaks throughout the state and region.”