CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Another crowd is expected at Covenant House on Tuesday for what will be the third in a series of weekly HIV testing clinics from Covenant House, West Virginia Health Right and Charleston Area Medical Center’s Ryan White Program.
This Tuesday and every Tuesday until further notice, $10 gift cards are available to anyone who shows up at Covenant House from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. to be tested for HIV.
The offer “seems to be working well,” said Christine Teague, program director for the Ryan White Program at CAMC.
In the first week, she reported 51 people considered at high risk for HIV were screened with about 50 percent of participants listing injecting drug use as a risk.
That number jumped to 62 last week with 25 to 30 percent saying they were IV drug users.
Out of those participants, one new HIV positive case was confirmed, according to Teague.
The testing in Kanawha County continues with more HIV cases being reported for a cluster in Cabell County, what is considered the only currently active HIV cluster in West Virginia.
“We need to continue those efforts, but I think other health departments, hospitals, other providers need to be on board with this as well and, if they have contact with people who report injecting drug use, they should be offering screening,” Teague said.
Earlier this month, the Bureau for Public Health in the state Department of Health and Human Resources put the number of cases at 44 which was an increase from 28 in March.
Most of the Cabell County cases have been linked to intravenous drug users.
“Given the proximity to Huntington, we know that it’s not unrealistic to think that those folks may have contacts in our area so, we as providers, need to be screening people regularly, especially if someone reports injecting drug use behavior,” Teague said.
“It just takes one to spread like wildfire if you don’t contain it.”
The Cabell-Huntington Health Department has started prescribing antiviral medication, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, for those at risk of HIV.
Such options are available in Kanawha County, Teague said.
“In order to contain it, you’ve got to be able to identify the people who are positive, find out who their networks are, who their contacts are, reach out to those folks, get them tested and, ultimately, they all need to be linked to care.”
For now, the Cabell County cluster has been confined to a specific population, intravenous drug uses, which is the reason for the “cluster” designation. Any announcement of an outbreak would indicate HIV was spreading beyond that initial group.
Because of that possibility, “It behooves the community at large to be aware of this and to be supportive of all the efforts that we can provide to this very vulnerable, high-risk population,” Teague said.
“I’m optimistic that people will start to work around this. We’ve got the tools.”