HIV/AIDS Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Dementia And The Holidays, Hope For Opioid Settlement Money And Concerning Health Trends, This West Virginia Week

On this West Virginia Week, we hear about some of the health challenges facing West Virginians — including lung disease, HIV/AIDS outbreaks and recovery.

On this West Virginia Week, we hear about some of the health challenges facing West Virginians — including lung disease, HIV/AIDS outbreaks and recovery.

We also learn how to meet the challenges of the holidays with aging family members.

Chris Schulz is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.

West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caroline MacGregor, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.

Learn more about West Virginia Week.

Fauci Weighs In On W.Va.’s HIV Rate

HIV Aids is on the rise in Monongalia County as a group of WVU Medical students learned recently on a Zoom call with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Since January 2018, the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health has been monitoring increased diagnoses of HIV across the state, especially among people who inject drugs.

According to the CDC, 210 new HIV infections occurred in West Virginia in 2022, the most recent federal data. In 2021, 149 people were newly diagnosed with HIV.

According to AIDSVu, an interactive online mapping tool that visualizes the impact of the HIV epidemic on communities across the country, in 2021, there were 2,196 people living with HIV in West Virginia.

According to the Bureau for Public Health, preliminary reporting shows 83 cases of HIV diagnosed in West Virginia so far in 2023.

In a Zoom call with West Virginia University (WVU) medical students, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, voiced his concern about the number of HIV diagnoses in Morgantown and West Virginia as a whole.

In 2019, Cabell County was the epicenter of a large HIV cluster, however, since then, HIV cases have been increasing in other areas of the state. Currently, this increase is still most significant in Cabell County with a total of 21 positive cases so far in 2023, with Kanawha County at 18 infections so far this year.

Fauci and Dr. Stef Shuster, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University, visited West Virginia University virtually in a conversation on the history of LGBTQ+ health care in the United States. The conversation was facilitated by Ellen Rodrigues, director of WVU’s LGBTQ+ Center.

While Fauci is known nationally for his work during the COVID-19 pandemic, he has spent 40 years on the forefront of HIV and AIDS research and treatment.

“Many of us across the country think of HIV and AIDS as a disease that is manageable and perhaps in our rearview mirror, right? But we have unfortunately, reliable data showing that right here, in Morgantown, West Virginia, the home of our university, we’ve had, we have now a substantial uptick in cases of HIV AIDS,” Rodrigues said.

Fauci responded that an uptick in HIV cases “surprises and dismays” him.

“The fact that you have an increase probably reflects two things,” Fauci said. “It’s the lack of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) accessibility, for those who are susceptible and a lack of accessibility to treatment for those who are already infected.”

Dr. Judith Feinberg is a professor of behavioral medicine and psychiatry and professor of medicine in infectious diseases, and the vice chair of medicine for research at WVU. She confirmed the recent outbreak or cluster of HIV and AIDS in Morgantown, defining a cluster as 10 infections or more.

“The one in Mon County, there are a couple of recent outbreaks, but the one in Mon county involves 10 men who have sex with men and they’ve been identified and offered care,” Feinberg said. “And I believe the majority are being cared for actually at what is called the positive health clinic here.”

Feinberg said that with modern preventative medication accessible and information available, cases of HIV and AIDs should be falling, not rising.

“Relative to the fact that before 2017, only an average of maybe 75 to 77 new cases were diagnosed a year, 10 new cases is a lot and in recent years since 2017, because we’ve had a number of HIV outbreaks across the state, that number has doubled,” Feinberg said. “I believe for 2021, which is the last year we have full reporting on it’s something like 139. And it’s been running about double ever since 2017 and that’s really because that’s the point at which HIV entered the community of people who inject drugs.”

Feinberg said there are two major behavioral risks associated with HIV.Fauci agreed with Feinberg’s conclusion about the reason for an uptick in cases in West Virginia.

“Injecting drugs has really recently overtaken men who have sex with men as the primary behavior behavioral risk for HIV,” Fauci said. “And how can we do better with this? Well, first of all, we need a public, we need the public to understand that this is happening.”

According to the West Virginia 2020-2022 Substance Use Response Plan, from 2014 to 2017, the drug overdose death rate in West Virginia increased from a rate of 35.5 per 100,000 to 57.8 per 100,000, far exceeding any other state in the nation.

“Drug addiction, as we all know, is a disease and not a crime,” Fauci said. “And when you’re trying to prevent someone from getting infected from injection drug use, that’s a very difficult problem unless you get sterile needles a little as a needle exchange, but for sexual transmission, we should be looking in the community about why is there lack of the access to what we know is a highly effective prevention. That’s my only comment about that. Very disturbing.”

That prevention is available as a pill to be taken frequently, or a shot, taken on a less frequent basis.

“That is entirely preventable,” Fauci said. “We now have pre-exposure prophylaxis that’s either in an oral form with a drug that you could take every day or in association with your sexual contact, or now most recently, highly, highly effective, injectable long acting every couple of months, pre-exposure prophylaxis that the efficacy of that in preventing perfection, if utilized properly, is 90 plus percent 98 percent, sometimes close to 100 percent.”

With preventative medication available, experts think it is a lack of public perception of HIV and AIDs as a threat that leads to an uptick in infections.

“Changing public perception has been really hard. And I think, as I said, I think what happened is that this entered the public knowledge and the public imagination decades ago, in this more limited context of you know, men who have sex with men,” Feinberg said. “So I think, you know, education and having an awareness is really key, right?”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

HIV/AIDS On The Rise In Monongalia County And A Look At Soul Food Traditions In Appalachia, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, HIV/AIDS is on the rise in Monongalia County as a group of WVU medical students learned recently on a Zoom call with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Emily Rice has more.

On this West Virginia Morning, HIV/AIDS is on the rise in Monongalia County as a group of WVU medical students learned recently on a Zoom call with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Emily Rice has more.

Also, in this show, soul food is associated with Black communities in the south, but it’s also traditional to Appalachia. Folkways Fellow Vanessa Peña talked with Xavier Oglesby, a master artist in soul food cooking from Beckley.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Caroline MacGregor produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Needle Exchange Closes in Mercer County

The Mercer County Health Department voted Wednesday to close its needle exchange program due to strict requirements under a new state law, according to reporting from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

“Under the new law, we can’t comply,” Health Department Administrator Roger Topping told board members. He noted almost 50 requirements that had to be approved for a license to offer a harm reduction program that includes a needle exchange.

Mercer County health officials began the needle exchange in 2019.

The law in question, West Virginia Senate Bill 334, requires programs offering syringe exchanges to deny clean needles to those who don’t return used ones and only serve clients with state IDs.

Syringe exchanges are widely seen by public health experts as a key measure in preventing the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis C among people who inject drugs.

HIV In The Mountain State: Robert Becomes A Caretaker After His Partner's Death

Robert Singleton moved to Hardy County, West Virginia in search of peace and clean air. An internationally recognized painter, Robert decided to build a home and studio on a piece of property that overlooked the Blue Ridge Mountains.

In 1987, Robert and his partner, Steven Russell, decided it was time to move in together.

“We had talked about AIDS, or HIV. And he said that he had been tested and was negative. And, I said I had also and as long as we were faithful to each other, we had nothing to be concerned about, because we were both negative.”

One day, before Steven was supposed to go to work, Robert found him sitting in a chair on their back porch.

“I was sitting here and he was beet red. I said, ‘Steven, you don’t look well.’ I put my hand on his forehead and he was burning up and he said, ‘Robert, I haven’t been honest with you. I’ve been really sick.’”

When Robert took his temperature, Steven had a fever of 105. He told Robert he had been steadily losing weight.

“We didn’t use the word AIDS. It was a know — a very fearful knowing. And I said well, ‘Will you trust me? I need to do some things.’ And he said, “Yes, please do what you have to do.’”

Robert called the national AIDS hotline. Within a couple of hours, a nurse at a local hospital called back. She said both Robert and Steven needed to come in as soon as possible.

“The doctor came in to examine him. They drew some blood and did some testing. And then, I don’t know, 30 minutes later they came back and he said, “Steven, I hate to tell you this. But you have full-blown AIDS.’”

“I was sitting right next to him and he was on a gurney. And he just rolled over and looked at me and he said, “Robert, I’m really sorry if I’ve done something to you.” I said, “Don’t worry about it, Steven. We’ll take it a day at a time. We need to focus on you.”

Robert’s test results came back negative. But, he and Stephen both knew what Stephen’s positive diagnosis meant.

“He lived for two years to that day. From the day he was diagnosed to the day he died was exactly two years.”

Robert, now 83, still lives and paints in the same house as he did when Steven was alive. While sitting on the same back porch where his life changed forever, Robert points over to a hill on his property.

“Steve and I used to hang out there, it was a nice place in the summer. We’d take a cold beer and sit under the trees. Anyway, just before he died, he said would I please put his ashes up there on the hill under the trees?”

While Robert never contracted the disease himself, it radically changed the trajectory of his life. Seven of his lifelong friends would die of complications related to AIDS.

“There was a Thanksgiving in, maybe, 1984? We gathered here for a big Thanksgiving dinner. Every one of them, every single one of those people, and their partners died of AIDS. All except me. They all got AIDS and died.”

In Robert’s memoir, titled “Until I Become Light”, he includes a poem about that night. The final verse reads, “Of AIDS, they all suffered. Died. Martyrs of love incarnate. Martyred all, save one.”

As Robert watched his friends go one by one, he decided to lean into the role of caretaker. Anyone dying of AIDS would have his unwavering support. His friends weren’t just dying a painful death. They were dying of a disease that kept everyone else far away from them.

“They were terrified of this plague. The ‘Gay Plague’ is what they referred to it as. And I, for some unknown reason, I was not terrified. I felt these were people I really cared about a great deal. And, for whatever reason, I was not fearful.”

Not long after Steven’s passing, his close friend Butch reached out.

“I knew by this time that he was ill. He called me and said “Robert, there’s only one place I want to be and one person I want to be with.”

Butch asked to have his ashes placed on the same hill where Robert had put Steven’s. Each of the people Robert would accompany to the end of their life would make the same request.

Robert talks about the people he’s lost with nostalgia. But there’s also a sense of peace. He knows at their most desperate hour, he was able to provide the people closest to him with companionship and a promise.

“They’re all up there. They all wanted to go there. They made me promise them once they had passed that I would put them up on the hill.”

Robert rarely visits the top of the hill anymore. His lung condition makes long walks in the summer heat strenuous. Instead he says he’s content to watch the hickory leaves in the spring–a reminder each year that his friends are, in a way, still living. And at the core of his joy is the knowledge that some day he will join them — when he becomes light.

Federal Dollars On The Way To Help Fight Alarming HIV Outbreak In WV

West Virginia’s HIV outbreak is getting noticed by lawmakers in Washington. Earlier this week, U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito announced that $2,397,881 will go to the state Department of Health and Human Services for HIV/AIDS prevention and medical treatment.

The money would come from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, according to a news release from Manchin’s office.

A needle exchange program in Charleston was shut down in 2018 amid public outcry. Three years later, CDC officials say the city is now at the center of the most alarming outbreak of HIV in the nation.

Earlier this month, the Kanawha County Health Department said it would invest more resources into HIV testing in the county.