Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jul 2015
Source: News-Sentinel, The (Fort  Wayne, IN)
Copyright: 2015 The News-Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.news-sentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1077
Author: Ellie Bogue

HEALTH DEPARTMENT LOOKS TO FIGHT IV DRUG ABUSE

The Fort Wayne Allen County Board of Health took a closer look on 
Monday at national and local trends in the illegal use of opiates.

Capt. Kevin Hunter of the Fort Wayne Police Department gave an 
overview of what is going on nationally and in the city. Since 2013, 
many prescription opiate abusers have turned to heroin as a cheaper, 
more readily available source to feed their addictions.

According to Hunter, today's heroin, which comes from Mexico, is much 
stronger and more addictive than the drug of the 1960s and 1970s. 
Most users are injecting the drug, which is a public-health concern. 
Recently police have seen an uptick in the number of people using 
fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid used as a pain 
reliever and anesthetic. It is a schedule II substance under the 
Controlled Substances Act. Recently three people died from overdoses 
of the drug, which was sold to them as heroin.

Allen County Health Commissioner Dr. Deborah McMahan is worried Allen 
County could experience the same sort of HIV/hepatitis C outbreak 
that Scott County had last spring. To date, 170 new cases of HIV and 
hepatitis C have been reported in Scott County. The outbreak was 
caused by prostitution and by intravenous drug users sharing needles. 
McMahan told the board it would cost a lot more to treat someone for 
hepatitis C, which costs $100,000 per person, plus the cost of 
treating the lifetime condition of HIV treatment and services.

Health department Administrator Mindy Waldron said it took a 
significant amount of time for the department to bounce back from 
treating an outbreak of tuberculosis several years ago. She said she 
would hate to think what an HIV/hepatitis C outbreak would cost 
county taxpayers.

The health department is preparing for an outbreak by designing a 
free needle-exchange program. The program would allow intravenous 
drug users to exchange their used needles for clean ones. Studies 
have found that needle-exchange programs will stop the spread of 
diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C, that are transmitted from 
person to person by sharing needles.

Contrary to popular belief, McMahan said, a needle-exchange program 
does not increase the number of people using intravenous drugs. 
Should an outbreak occur, precautions would be in place so medical 
personnel would know to look for old track marks proving someone was 
already an intravenous drug user before they would give the person 
clean needles. Just how many needles would be handed out for one 
handed in is still under discussion. In Scott County the exchange was 
one to one, McMahan said.

Also in the planning to help stop the use of intravenous drugs is an 
educational plan that could be inserted into the health curriculum at 
area schools to educate students about the dangers of using these 
sorts of drugs.

McMahan said they are preparing now in case the upswing in heroin and 
intravenous drug use sparks an epidemic here.

Hunter said police are working with the health department to try to 
limit the spread of these infectious diseases. Two weeks ago on a 
heroin narcotics raid, police brought along health department 
personnel who offered to give people caught in the raid HIV/hepatitis 
C screening tests. Although they had never done this before, police 
have worked with the health department on prostitution cases, 
offering free testing for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom