An HIV outbreak among people who inject drugs in Indiana from 2011 to 2015 could have been avoided if the state's top health and elected officials had acted sooner on warnings, a new study by the Yale School of Public Health finds.
The study, published in The Lancet HIV, found that the number of HIV infections could have been drastically reduced in Indiana’s Scott County and that the state's belated response in March 2015 came after the peak of the epidemic, likely having little effect on its trajectory.
The finding, said the researchers, offers a stark warning to public officials confronting the opioid crisis across the United States: Ignoring the risk of HIV can have terrible consequences for public health.
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Published: Sunday, September 16, 2018
