Posted on October 10, 2016
Source: The Body
"Baltimore has one of the higher HIV rates among U.S. cities. It's also the city that one-third of the people in Maryland's state prisons call home.
What do the two have to do with each other? A lot, according to 'The Global Burden of HIV, Viral Hepatitis, and Tuberculosis in Prisoners and Detainees', a recent study on HIV and incarceration worldwide. Though the authors don't examine individual cities, or even countries, they note that mass incarceration, particularly the cycling of people in and out of jails and prisons, has contributed to the spread of not only HIV, but also viral hepatitis and tuberculosis.
But it's not just Baltimore, or even Maryland. The authors estimate that, of the approximately 10.2 million people incarcerated on any given day, 3.8 percent (or 389,000 people) are living with HIV. In the United States, prisons in Florida, Maryland and New York have higher rates of HIV prevalence than any country outside sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, incarceration in the United States disproportionately impacts people of color, particularly African Americans.
Andrea Wirtz, Ph.D., one of the study's co-authors and an assistant scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is quick to clarify that it's not that HIV transmission is rampant within U.S. jails and prisons. The availability of antiretroviral therapy in prison actually keeps the risk of transmission low behind bars, she told TheBody.com. The risk arises once people are released and have difficulties continuing their medications. These interruptions mean they are no longer virally suppressed and thus are more at risk of transmission. 'It's right after release that there's an increased risk of overdose and HIV transmission,' she explained."
