By Erin Delmore
Correspondent
Health advocates are applauding Gov. Chris christie signing a bill to expand the syringe access program to all cities in the state. It’s a move that could make a difference on combating at least one deadly disease.
“HIV is a community burden and it needs to be addressed by the community,” said Dr. Hanaa Hamdi, Newark health director.
While the city of Newark accounts for only 3 percent of the state’s population, it’s home to 15 percent of New Jerseyans living with HIV/AIDS.
“We need to do more work in prevention. We need to raise awareness. Part of it is there’s a lack of partnership and cooperation that needs to work, that needs to be put in place to work,” Hamdi said.
Hamdi says current data is hard to come by but that New Jersey’s largest city has seen an average increase of 165 cases annually. She also points to a “snapshot” from Dec. 31, 2014 that shows nearly 6,000 people in Newark living with HIV/AIDS — 96 percent of them black or Hispanic.
“It could also be that we have a lot of services here, right? So we have a lot of transient population who come here for services. It’s not necessarily, you know, a population that’s from Newark,” Hamdi said.
According to the New Jersey Department of Health’s 2014 data, nearly a quarter of Newark residents living with HIV/AIDS contracted it through injection drug use, 42 percent by heterosexual contact and 17 percent through male to male sexual contact.
Hamdi says the rate of infection is on the rise among young people in Newark. While people under age 25 make up only 5 percent of the city’s total infected population, that age group represents more than 25 percent of new cases.
Roseanne Scotti of the Drug Policy Alliance believes the trend is tied to the state’s opioid addiction crisis.
“We’ve seen this movie before. We know what’s going to happen. It’s the reason that we created needle exchange programs in this state, because we were seeing transmission through people sharing dirty syringes. And unless we act now and fund these programs, we’re going to see it all over again,” she said.
Democratic state Sen. Joe Vitale tucked funding for needle exchange programs into the state budget proposal — $95,000.
Gov. Chris Christie line-item vetoed it in June. But Christie’s move Wednesday to invest $200,000 in syringe exchange programs has drawn praise from the state Department of Health. The Department’s Deputy Commissioner told NJTV News in a statement, “There will be a decrease in HIV and Hepatitis transmission among participants in the five existing syringe access programs as a result of the governor’s action in providing funds for sterile syringes and supplies.”
The department adds that across the state, newly reported HIV/AIDS among intravenous drug users declined between 2000 and 2015 from 690 cases to just 43 cases last year.
Vitale told NJTV News the state spends money wisely on addiction services and that needle exchange is a necessary part of the puzzle. He has legislation pending to increase the number of needle exchange sites statewide.