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Vancouver public health officials
want to expand HIV/AIDS testing to every sexually active person who visits a
family physician or is admitted to a hospital emergency department. Vancouver
is the first Canadian city to advocate routine HIV testing in these settings;
the push for it comes in the final year of a four-year program.
Dr. Patricia Daly, chief medical
officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said a goal is to convince family doctors
to give HIV tests as routinely as other blood tests, even if people are not
considered high-risk.
Daly said HIV testing is considered
cost-effective if it identifies one in 1,000 cases. The stepped-up testing in
Vancouver has increased the identification of HIV cases to one in 100. Almost
everyone offered an HIV test accepts, and testing pregnant women has
dramatically decreased the rate of infection from mothers to newborns.
Ken Buchanan, with the AIDS advocacy
group Positive Living, voiced his concern that widespread testing will not give
patients sufficient privacy. “But we do encourage people to be tested and the
sooner they know whether they’re HIV-positive, the sooner they can get on
medication,” he said.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
