City Is Pushing for H.I.V. Tests for All in Bronx

NY Times ^ | June 26, 2008 | ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

[neverdem]

The New York City health department plans to announce on Thursday an ambitious three-year effort to give an H.I.V. test to every adult living in the Bronx, which has a far higher death rate from AIDS than any other borough. The campaign will begin with a push to make the voluntary testing routine in emergency rooms and storefront clinics, where city officials say that cumbersome consent procedures required by state law have deterred doctors from offering the tests.

“Routine would mean if you came into the emergency room for asthma or a broken leg, we test everyone for H.I.V., if they’re willing,” the health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said in an interview on Wednesday.

While Manhattan has long been the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in New York, with the highest incidence of both AIDS and H.I.V., the virus that causes it, the Bronx, with its poorer population, has far more deaths from the disease. Public health officials attribute this to people not getting tested until it is too late to treat the virus effectively, thus turning a disease that can now be managed with medication into a death sentence.

Several AIDS experts said on Wednesday that the Bronx campaign was the most aggressive testing effort they could recall in the nation. Two years ago, Washington, D.C., made a high-profile push to test 450,000 residents, enlisting celebrity endorsements and distributing 80,000 free testing kits, but the campaign resulted in only about 45,000 people being tested.

“What’s new here is that we are implementing it on this large a level,” said Dr. Donna Futterman, director of the adolescent AIDS program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, who helped New York develop the new program. “The Bronx has 1.3 million people. It’s bigger than most cities, bigger than .”

[Dilbert San Diego]

Most people are not at high risk of AIDS. Is it cost effective to do this, to test everyone?

Or does the Bronx have so many high risk people that it makes sense?

Or does the Bronx have a big population that historically just don’t go to doctors, so this is a good screening tool? Just wondering what it’s all about.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Two years ago, Washington, D.C., made a high-profile push to test 450,000 residents, enlisting celebrity endorsements and distributing 80,000 free testing kits, but the campaign resulted in only about 45,000 people being tested.

WTF? 10% participation in D.C.? How hard is it to penetrate ignorance? With folks like Rev. Wright claiming that HIV was introduced into the black population intentionally as a matter of a genocide... and with a Harvard Law educated presidential candidate regularly and passively listening to such pap and not making the effort to specifically repudiate that claim...it's a widespread ignorance indeed. An obdurate one, evidently.

[cherry]

there is a misconception about "treating" AIDS....as I understand it, there was initial hope that the AIDS "cocktail" of several meds would lower the virus count tremendously....but it seems that it is not as affective as once hoped....

AIDS is not curable yet....

and let them test for the disease within its probable population.....drug abusers, homosexuals, bisexuals, prostitutes.....

knowing the results will what?....make them stop their behaviour?....no....make them use condomns?...no....make them stop using drugs and the same paraphenalia?...no....

so why test?....we have no power to change the BEHAVIOR ....

[neverdem]

Most people are not at high risk of AIDS. Is it cost effective to do this, to test everyone?

Or does the Bronx have so many high risk people that it makes sense?

Or does the Bronx have a big population that historically just don’t go to doctors, so this is a good screening tool? Just wondering what it’s all about.

The Bronx has the highest mortality rates, and the liberals can't tolerate that in mostly people of color.

[MrBambaLaMamba]

Will those tested also get a kewl wrist tattoo?