Healing Austin: Town races to stop America's worst rural HIV plague (Part 2)

AUSTIN, Ind. – Before the plague, the city withered.

Drug houses sprung up next door to the small, well-kept homes where working-class families struggled by. Weeds and rot slowly claimed abandoned houses like the one across from Dr. Will Cooke’s brick offices near the railroad tracks.

And amid the festering blight, rumors of HIV spread like the virus.

Then a February 2015 story in the Courier-Journal confirmed Cooke’s worst fears. Tests had found 26 confirmed and four preliminary positive HIV cases linked to shooting up painkillers in an area that had never seen more than a handful.

Whispers gave way to open conversations. Cooke, the lone physician in this city of 4,200, emailed a long list of doctors and health leaders offering his help.

Read more: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/indiana/2017/04/20/healing-austin-part-two-troubled-city-tested/97735344/