Coronavirus: Spotlight on VP Mike Pence's handling of HIV outbreak in 2015

Vice President Mike Pence tours the Secretary's Operations Centre following a coronavirus task force meeting. Photo / AP

President Donald Trump's choice of Vice President Mike Pence to oversee the nation's response to the new coronavirus threat is bringing renewed scrutiny to the former governor's handling of an HIV outbreak in southern Indiana when he was governor.

Pence reluctantly agreed to authorise a needle exchange program in Scott County in March 2015 after the epidemic centred there saw the number of people infected with HIV skyrocket, with nearly 200 people eventually testing positive for the virus that year.

Despite his own misgivings — Pence worried about how the exchanges would affect "anti-drug policy" and had misgivings about providing clean needles to addicts — he initially issued an executive order allowing one in Scott County before later signing a law allowing the state government to approve them for counties on a case-by-case basis.

Vice President Mike Pence shakes hands with a worker as he tours the Secretary's Operations Centre. Photo / AP

Greg Millett, director of public policy at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, said Indiana's HIV outbreak would have been "entirely preventable" if Pence had acted earlier in response to data that was available to Indiana public health officials and clearly showed an outbreak was imminent.

The outbreak primarily infected intravenous users of the painkiller Opana in an impoverished, rural area with few health resources. The needle exchange Pence finally approved for Scott County successfully curbed the epidemic's spread by providing clean needles to IV drug users to reduce needle-sharing that spreads HIV, hepatitis C and other diseases.

Millett said Scott County had averaged five new HIV cases annually between 2004 and 2013, but between November 2014 and January 11, 2015, it suddenly saw 13 new cases in just over two months.

Quick implementation of a needle exchange programme could have stopped that escalation, but new cases continued to surge without one, he said.

"This would have been entirely preventable if Indiana had acted fast with a syringe exchange," he said. "To have some 200 people become infected over such a short time period was unprecedented."

Millett, who worked as an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 1999 and 2013, doing HIV research, said the CDC later determined that Indiana's outbreak resulted in infections that will amount to US$100 million in health care costs — expenses he said could have been reduced or avoided by a quicker response.

Despite his reservations about Pence, Millett said he's encouraged by the vice president's announcement Thursday that Debbie Birx, the administration's global AIDS coordinator, will serve under the vice president as the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

Millett called Birx an effective and respected public health leader.

"She'll bring in people who are experts in infectious diseases who can mount an effective response," he said.

But Steven Thrasher, a Northwestern University journalism professor who has studied Indiana's outbreak as part of his research into HIV and LGBTQ health issues, said Pence's response as Indiana governor raises real questions about whether he's the best person to helm the response to the virus.

Thrasher said that while HIV cases were mounting in Scott County — which lies about 48km north of Louisville, Kentucky — Pence told local officials wondering whether he would approve a needle exchange "that he was going to pray on it."

"His background shows that he brings religion, a lack of science and a budgetary mindset to public health matters. In a time of emergency, those are not the safest ways to be approaching what could become an epidemic," Thrasher said.

Pence's office, when asked for comment, referred a reporter to a former Indiana government worker, Joey Fox, and the Surgeon General's office, which did not immediately return a request for comment. Fox, who was legislative director for the Indiana State Department of Health during the HIV outbreak, said Thursday that the criticism of Pence is unfair because Indiana's response to the HIV outbreak went far beyond just authorising a needle exchange programme.

Vice President Mike Pence talks to task force members. Photo / AP

Fox said the state's response included bringing HIV testing to the small city of Austin — the community at the heart of the outbreak — at a "one-stop-shop" office where the county's needle exchange was initially based.

At that office, people could get tested, enrol in Medicaid to begin HIV medical treatment, get state identification cards and birth certificates and receive other services.

"It's unfair to criticise the governor," Fox said. "He was personally engaged with the public health and the public safety of Scott County, and the Indiana government was engaged from day one on the HIV outbreak.

"Before Mike Pence syringe exchanges were illegal in Indiana. When he left office there were programmes around the state."

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington urged Trump on Thursday to reconsider the choice of Pence, citing his "lack of public health experience and record of putting ideology over science" and his "leadership failure during the Indiana HIV outbreak."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters she spoke to Pence on Thursday morning and "expressed to him the concern that I had of his being in this position."

Pelosi said that while she wants to work with the White House, she told Pence she was wary of his leadership after his track record in Indiana.

Pence's state health commissioner at the time of the HIV outbreak, Jerome Adams, is now US surgeon general and is widely credited with helping persuade Pence to accept the needle exchange programme that now operates in nine of Indiana's 92 counties.

Indiana's needle exchange debate in 2015 was complicated by opposition from law enforcement groups who worried that such programs would enable drug abuse.

Scott County's current health administrator said the county's exchange — through which participants swap used needles for clean ones to stem the spread of diseases through needle-sharing — had a dramatic impact on the outbreak.

Since the county's needle exchange began in early 2015, the number of new HIV cases tied to the outbreak has declined each year, said Michelle Matern, administrator for Scott County's health department.

"I think the data speaks for itself, that it's decreasing the transmission of infectious diseases," she said.

In 2015, there were 187 new HIV cases linked to the same HIV strain involved in the outbreak. Cases plunged to 27 in 2016, 12 in 2017 and 10 in 2018, with a preliminary count of seven new cases last year, Matern said.

Health advocates have long criticised Indiana's Republican-dominated government for paying scant attention to public health, with the state ranking 47th in public health funding, according to a 2019 study by the United Health Foundation.

- AP