The Putnam County Board of Health has moved to pay the last of its nearly $400,000 in outstanding debts, two years after the financially ailing department first contracted with the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department in a bid to right itself.
On Tuesday, the board voted to use roughly $73,000 of the $100,000 given to the agency yearly by the Putnam County Commission to pay its remaining debts, including a $65,000 loan from the commission itself.
"We're exciting to be able to really focus on health going forward," said Putnam County commissioner and health board member Andy Skidmore. "It's a huge relief. Especially dealing with it in both capacities, as both a commissioner and board member, but we're just tickled to death with where we've gotten back to."
Mounting financial problems drove the Putnam health department to give over its clinical operations - and part of its state funding - to the KCHD in June of 2013, and lay off its entire staff. Part of its debt stemmed from more than $60,000 in pack pay owed to a former sanitarian who was fired by former administrators twice, in 2010 and 2011, and successfully filing two wrongful termination grievances, and from more than $130,000 owed to Gary Young, the PCHD's former landlord.
According to Skidmore, the Putnam health board recently renewed its yearly contract with the KCHD, and he did not foresee his agency breaking from the Kanawha health department in the near future. The Putnam agency is still the object of a federal investigation, as well, and Skidmore said he was not aware of progress made to wrap up that investigation.
Dr. Michael Brumage, the new director and health officer for the KCHD, told the board Tuesday that the Kanawha health department is more actively exploring launching its own harm reduction program for Kanawha and Putnam counties, similar to the one currently being implemented in Cabell County. In July, the Cabell-Huntington Health Department, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources and the city of Huntington launched the state's first syringe-exchange program, a facet of a larger harm reduction program that encompasses education, referrals.
Needle-exchange programs offer free sterile syringes and collect used syringes from injection-drug users, to reduce the spread of blood-borne pathogens, including HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Multiple studies have documented that they reduce the risk of HIV infection among injection-drug users and their partners, Dr. Rahul Gupta, commissioner for the Bureau for Public Health and state health officer, told the Gazette in July. The pilot program is estimated to be fully operational by September, and Brumage said the KCHD is likely to follow suit soon after.
"It's not just about syringe exchange - there's a whole package of services that go along with it," Brumage said. "We know from the evidence in the literature already - 160 programs across the country have shown great success with reducing the number of those addicted and getting people into recovery, as well as in reducing the diseases that go along with IV drug abuse, so we're not going to wait any longer than we have to to implement this."
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.