AIDS Tests for Everyone
Posted on May 8, 2006
CBS News is reporting that the CDC plans new guidelines later this summer that will include a recommendation that everyone aged 13 to 64 who visits a doctor gets test for AIDS.
The radical change to HIV testing guidelines will be released in June or July, says Kevin Fenton, MD, PhD, the new director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention. Routine HIV tests in doctors� offices and clinics will no longer require the pretest counseling now a part of all HIV testing.The CDC says 500,000 have AIDS in the U.S. and a million more may be carrying the disease without realizing it.Fenton, joined by former CDC AIDS chief James Curran, MD, MPH, now dean of Emory University�s Rollins School of Public Health, spoke today at a news conference marking the 25th anniversary of the AIDS pandemic.
"Most HIV is transmitted by the 25% of infected people who do not even realize they are infected," Fenton said. "We need to dramatically expand access to HIV testing by making it a routine aspect of clinical care."
Five hundred thousand Americans are among the 25 million dead from AIDS. A million more Americans now carry the virus -- and nearly 16,000 died in 2004. If you think it's easy to live with the AIDS virus, if you think AIDS drugs are a cure, think again.The article also says that 40,000 new people are infected each year. HIV infections have also been increasing among heterosexuals. The CDC has an AIDS fact sheet available here."Living with HIV is not easy," Fenton said. "The drugs can cause serious side effects and sometimes don't work for the long term. We need to reduce the number of people who become infected in the first place. Twenty-five years into the epidemic, prevention is the only cure we have."
