Federal study would test all adults in a community for AIDS

The New York Times reports that "Federal health officials are preparing a plan to study a bold new strategy to stop the spread of the AIDS virus: routinely testing virtually every adult in a community, and promptly treating those found to be infected. The strategy is called 'test and treat,' and officials say the two sites for the three-year study will be the District of Columbia and the Bronx — locales with some of the nation's highest rates of infection with human immunodeficiency virus."

Officials say this is "just a first step" and that the "goal is not to measure whether 'test and treat' actually works to slow an epidemic, but whether such a strategy can even be carried out, given the many barriers to being tested and getting medical care." Dr. Shannon L. Hader, director of the HIV/AIDS administration in D.C.'s Department of Health, said in the article that "as many as 5 percent of the adults in the District of Columbia are infected — a rate ... comparable with those in West Africa — and one-third to one-half do not even know they harbor the virus. ... In 2006, only about half of Washington residents who had a new diagnosis of H.I.V. saw a doctor about the problem within six months" (Okie, 10/27).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.