By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
The Grant County Fiscal Court Monday voted in favor of a needle exchange program, which will be administered through the Northern Kentucky Health Department facility in Williamstown.
The Williamstown City Council unanimously approved needle exchange in August.
This will be the first needle exchange program administered through the Northern Kentucky Health Department. Information on how the needle exchange program will be implemented is available here .
The approval of needle exchange is a boost for its supporters in the region, but it still leaves the more populated Northern Kentucky counties without a program.
Elected officials in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties, as well as the cities of Florence, Newport and Covington, where the programs would be administered, have yet to vote on needle exchange.
Grant County becomes the eighth county in the Commonwealth to approve a needle exchange program since the General Assembly included needle exchange in a comprehensive heroin bill passed in March, 2015.
Senate Bill 192, however, requires approval from both the city and the county that will host the program.
St. Elizabeth Healthcare CEO Garren Colvin and Dr. Lynne Saddler, Northern Kentucky District Director of Health, have led a delegation encouraging elected officials throughout the region to support needle exchange.
Saddler and Colvin have focused on the potential health hazards associated with an epidemic of Hepatitis C or HIV, which could be fostered by the sharing of contaminated needles.
The rate of hepatitis C is nearly 20 percent higher than the national average in Northern Kentucky. The cost to treat a patient with hepatitis C is $85,000 and the expense associated with care of someone who contracts HIV is about 10 times that, over a lifetime.
It’s too soon to tell if the Grant County decision will increase the pressure on its neighbors to the north to make a decision on needle exchange.
A date for implementation of the program, which will be administered through the Northern Kentucky Health Department’s Grant County Health Center in Williamstown, has not been determined.
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytribune.com