Treatment to stop HIV in its tracks available locally at hospital
By Mike Ludwig
June 2, 2008
An emergency worker is accidentally stabbed by an addict’s syringe while attempting to revive him after an overdose. The drug user is HIV-positive.
Two people meet at a bar and go home together. Their condom breaks, and one confesses that he is HIV-positive.
Situations such as these can happen at any time, but they don’t have to end in tragedy. There is a preventative treatment that can keep the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, from infecting those who have been exposed to it, and it’s available in Athens.
The treatment is known as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), PEP is a heavy cocktail of highly active, antiretroviral drugs that can prevent HIV infection in individuals up to 72 hours after exposure to the virus. The 28-day regimen causes debilitating fatigue and nausea, but a study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the rapid administration of PEP could lower a patient’s risk of contracting HIV up to 81 percent.
In 2005, the CDC published a report recommending that clinicians administer PEP to people exposed to “blood, genital excretions, or other potentially infectious bodily fluids of an HIV-infected person” on a case-by-case basis. Despite this recommendation, only New York, California, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Rhode Island have polices in place to ensure that the general public can access the drugs. Ohio has no legal policy on distributing PEP to the public, and Ohioans must consult a physician and get a prescription before receiving the treatment.
According to Ohio Aids Council spokesperson Kevin Sullivan, most hospitals and clinics in Ohio make PEP available to hospital workers who are exposed to HIV on the job, but there is no official standard for administering the treatment to victims of sexual violence or members of the general public who quickly discover that they could have contracted the virus.
“I am not aware of anybody who has it available to the public,” Sullivan said.
The lack of a public policy allows health officials who fear that prescribing PEP to the public would encourage risky, or “immoral,” behaviors to refuse to offer the treatment. Supporters of the treatment say this poses the threat of discrimination toward homosexuals, bisexuals and others whose lifestyles could be judged by health officials on moral grounds.
The good news is that southeast Ohioans can get PEP without taking an emergency flight to New York. According to Sherry Lawson, R.N., director of nursing at the Athens City-County Health Department, the policy at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital is clear.
“Anyone who goes through the ER at O’Bleness can get PEP,” she said.
Lawson said that, as far as she knows, O’Bleness is the only place in Athens County where PEP is available.
A spokesperson for Ohio University’s Hudson Health Center said that the student health clinic does not have PEP stocked in its
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