the part with my neck, that's new, that's opana. >> reporter: kevin admits he's an addict hooked on opana. . >> ain't nothing like it. it's safe. >> reporter: he's the face of a new epidemic, one thought was on the decline in the united states. >> a friend of mine and myself went down and got tested for h.i.v. came back positive. blew me away. last thing in the world i expected to hear. >> reporter: he lives in austin, in scots county, indiana. it's the epicentre of the outbreak. >> every day i here a story of someone tested and they are elated they are negative. or you see the look in their face you don't have to ask what the results were. austin is facing the worst outbreak of h.i.v. ever. more than 100 cases since december. 20 times more than a typical year. jennifer with the indiana department the heated is in charge of the response she was in austin to help clean up discarded needles. >> we want project what the total number would be we haven't reached the peak we are hopeful it will be soon. >> reporter: the virus is spreading largely by sharing infected needles. >> it was nothing t

opana is stronger than oxycontin and easier to shoot up, but the sharing of dirty needles among users is feeding the h.i.v. infection in this community. so this neighborhood is sort of the epicenter of the outbreak right here? >> this is one of the areas, yes. >> reporter: william cooke is a local doctor. >> all it takes is one, you know, person that's h.i.v. positive sharing needles. it spreads like wildfire in a situation like that. >> reporter: the crisis is so severe, governor mike pence lifted indiana's ban on needle exchanges for 30 days so addicts here can replace dirty syringes with clean ones. >> these are what i got yesterday. i got 35 of them. that's enough to do me for a week. >> reporter: dr. cooke says the nation should take notice. >> i've described this community as a canary in the coal mine. this could happen anywhere. we're all austin, indiana. >> reporter: and one of the more disturbing things we heard around here, scott, is that some elderly people have been trying to supplement their income by selling opana on the street instead of using it for pain relief as thei

and last year he used the drug of choice opana that addicts cook and inject. dirty needles spread disease. he caught hepatitis and it's a miracle he's here. >> you get high. >> reporter: you don't think about h.i.v. >> you don't think about it. >> reporter: one in five live in poverty. >> it's one of the things. >> reporter: with seven officers the police chief struggles to contain the crime in a town plagued by homes. >> if we stop it here we could stop it everywhere. >> reporter: the governor declared a public health emergency. >> to stop the h.i.v. outbreak in its tracks. >> reporter: teams of workers arrived setting up a command center offering testing. state budget cuts shut a planned parent clinic. one of the few h.i.v. testing clinics. the town has one doctor. william cook. >> we could have averted this by addressing the drug problem five 10 years ago. we didn't. now we are seeing the end result of that. >> reporter: it's an end result the state health department insists was impossible to predict. >> in a perfect world all services would be accountable.

kevin polly two weeks ago, he showed us the needles he used to inject the opiate painkiller called opanarow to five times a day. from the needle exchange? >> yes. >> reporter: in town? >> yes. that's enough to do me for a week. >> reporter: but for months he was sharing contaminated needles with other users and is now diagnosed with h.i.v. was of the 135 cases diagnosed in this area. that risky behavior is behind the outbreak in southern indiana where several cases of full-blown aids have also been reported. at the community outreach center where dirty needles can be exchanged for clean ones with no questions asked, officials told us they discovered one needle that had been used 300 times. >> we see people's arms where they have abcesses because they use the same needle so many times. >> reporter: when users come here, first person they see is nurse brittany combs. what's that like? >> people sit across from you in tears. they say they don't want to live like this anymore. >> reporter: we went back to kevin's house today. he was gone. his father clyde said he checked into a rehab facilit

. >> reporter: kevin admits he's an addict hooked on opana. he's the face of a new epidemic one thought was on the decline in the united states. >> a friend of mine and myself went down and government tested for h.i.v. came back positive. blew me away. last thing in the world i expected to hear. >> reporter: he lives in austin in scots county indiana. austin is facing the worst outbreak of h.i.v. ever. more than 100 cases since december. users say clean measles are hard to find -- needles are hard to find because of the law. indiana governor suspended that law. >> today i declared a public health emergency in scott county indiana. teams of workers arrived to provide testing, doctors, counselling and a needle exchange in an attempt to contain the outbreak. with little experience of its own indiana turned to an established needle exchange in chicago for advice. >> we began syringe exchange in jan '92 and have done it since. >> reporter: it relies on addicts like doug that bring in used needles. when the programme was fought austin, they ran into