Earlier this week, countries marked World AIDS Day. In the U.S., 1.2 million people are estimated to be HIV-positive.
Locally, AIDS Connecticut said that more than 10,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS and the state is seeing new infections among young, Black and Latino gay and bisexual men.
But Shawn Lang, director for Public Policy with AIDS Connecticut, said prevention programs have been making an impact. "We've seen a 30 percent reduction in new HIV infections among injecting drug users in the last decade," she said.
One of those prevention programs is the syringe exchange program. Lang saidthe program's budget has been reduced by $22,000 or five percent under Governor Dannel Malloy's recissions.
"Staff really engage the clients, make referrals," Lang said. "They test for HIV; they test for Hep C. We can get them into treatment. If somebody wants to get services around HIV, we immediately connect them to one of our case managers."
Lang said that with the reduced funding, she expects cutbacks in the hours the the needle exchange program operates and in its staffing. "We know if we cut back in our prevention efforts in any part of the population, we're going to see increases in HIV infection rates and we don't want to go there," she said.
The syringe exchange program started in New Haven 25 years ago, followed by Hartford and Bridgeport. It was recently expanded to Willimantic.
