STAT+: Maine sought federal help amid its largest HIV outbreak in state history. It’s still waiting.

BANGOR — Steven Cronk, 41, sleeps among a row of tattered, sun-bleached tents that cling to a small strip of land between this city’s rusting railroad tracks and the Penobscot River. He estimated that most of the roughly five dozen people in this homeless encampment have HIV.

Cronk is among them. He is certain he was infected through a dirty needle, and is still reeling from the diagnosis he received about a year ago.

“Some days I think I’ve got a handle on it, some days it just goes downhill,” said Cronk, who has spent much of his life homeless.

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