Norton Says D.C. HIV/AIDS Report is Misleading (11/27/07)

Norton Says D.C. HIV/AIDS Report is Misleading and Calls on City to Fund Needle Exchange Program
November 27, 2007

Washington, DC-Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today called on the District government to immediately allocate funds from its 2008 budget for needle exchange programs to attack a major reason that the District's HIV/AIDS rate is higher than that of other jurisdictions. The Congresswoman succeeded this year in getting repeal on the congressional ban on a locally funded program that allows exchanging used and possibly infected needles for clean needles. The District's 2008 budget has been passed and signed by the President and is being implemented by the District. The needle exchange repealer has been passed by the House and removed by the Senate appropriations committee, but final passage is likely to come in an upcoming omnibus bill. Norton said that in light of the most recent HIV/AIDS report, she hopes that the city will begin the process of developing its needle exchange program with requests for proposals now, in order to be able "to hit the ground running as soon as the omnibus bill is signed."

The Congresswoman, who has been a leader in the House on Ryan White funding, which pays for most of the District's HIV/AIDS work, praised the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration for compiling an updated HIV/AIDS report. She said that although the report confirms statistics on the District's long-known first place national standing on HIV/AIDS infection, the breakdown by categories of transmission could prove useful in developing "a desperately and urgently needed new and comprehensive strategy for preventing this preventable disease.

"Norton's staff combed the new report but could find no mention of the congressional prohibition on needle exchange. Yet, the report found that injection drug use accounted for the largest proportion of deaths and was the second most reported mode of transmission of HIV. "The report does a disservice in creating headlines that the District has the highest AIDS rate without, at the very least, mentioning the possible effect of many years without fully operating and life saving needle exchange programs," Norton said. In 1994, for example, Baltimore reported that 62 percent of new cases resulted from injection drug use, which is now down to 40 percent with needle exchange programs. New York City has reduced its injection drug use rate for HIV/AIDS from over 50 percent of all cases to 13 percent in 2001. However, Norton said that the District's report may have left the impression that sexual transmission alone is responsible for the District's rate by not mentioning the possible effects of the congressional ban. Norton credited a privately funded program, PreventionWorks!, for excellent work with limited funding, which the organization has long said does not meet the need. She said a preliminary look at D.C.'s statistics compared with other midsized cities shows that, with the aid of a needle exchange program, the District might be well within the range of HIV/AIDS rates of those cities. Without such an analysis, the ranking of midsized cities from worst to best is District of Columbia; Baltimore; Oakland; Boston; Nashville; New Orleans; Charlotte; and El Paso. Norton has spent the last year encouraging safe sex and raising the level of discussion about HIV/AIDS through a series of four community town hall meetings on the epidemic, focusing on the clergy, men, women and teens. While pointing to the needle exchange ban as a significant cause of spreading the disease, Norton has emphasized at her meetings that the primary responsibility of fighting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases lies with individuals and their behavior, especially safe sex and testing to know your status.

The District's report comes as a number of events are taking place this week in the city and elsewhere to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday. Norton will give remarks at a town hall meeting sponsored by the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center, Howard University and the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration Wednesday, November 28 at 6:30 PM at Howard's Blackburn Center. Norton also will speak at a rally to protest the Bush administration's HIV/AIDS policies Friday, November 30 at 1:30 PM in Lafayette Park across from the White House.