Routine HIV Testing

From The Herald

HIV/AIDS experts met with more than 130 doctors and health care workers at Marina Jack Restaurant Friday to encourage them to include routine HIV testing for all patients within their practices.

"We are missing opportunities to find people early," said Dr. Jeffery A. Beal, clinical director of the Florida/Caribbean AIDS Education and Training Center and professor at the University of South Florida.

Prevention, Beal said, depends on the health care community making a sexual history a standard part of routine medical care. That sexual history should include open-ended questions that help doctors identify behaviors and/or symptoms that could be putting people at risk.

Too often doctors miss key signs in the diagnostic procedure because an HIV test is either not ordered or even considered necessary for the patient, Beal said.

The two groups Beal is most concerned about are populations not often considered to be at risk for HIV - adolescents and senior citizens. Yet, adolescents account for more than half of the 40,000 new HIV infections each year while seniors account for 11 percent of the positive tests, Beal said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimate that only one in every four people who have HIV are aware that they are infected.

Medicine Tag
Health Tag