IV DRUG USERS AND AIDS

IV DRUG USERS

AND AIDS

Almost 1/4 of the estimated 1 million HIV-positive people in the

U.S. are said to have become infected via shared needles in the course of taking illegal intravenous (IV) drugs. Because IV drug use is kept private, health officials have a hard time halting or even tracking the spread of AIDS through a subculture which is often too stoned or fatalistic to care. The cost of addictive drugs, coupled with their intoxicating effects, boosts prostitution and swells the ranks of the homeless. Neither prostitutes nor homeless people are easily counted, so only rough estimates are available, but advocates for the homeless say that of some 230,000 homeless people in the U.S. about 30,000 have AIDS. If this number is correct, it would mean that homeless people account for more than 1/3 of living people with AIDS. But not all homeless people with AIDS are IV drug users; some have become homeless because they lack health insurance and are no longer able to work.

Tuberculosis of the lungs, an often-fatal bacterial disease once thought to be nearly eradicated in the U.S., has become epidemic among IV drug users with AIDS, especially in the New York area. Because IV drug users are often non-compliant about taking medication, they may quit prescribed antibiotics while the disease is still in their bodies, thus breeding new, resistant strains of TB. Multiresistant TB strains may not be stopped by any known drug. TB is spread by coughing, so it is far more contagious than AIDS.

Needle exchange programs have been shown to effectively reduce the transmission of HIV among IV drug users, but in many places they remain hampered by legal constraints (see card 68). Next Card 89: AIDS AND GOVERNMENT: 12 Years of Neglect