New federal guidelines for state reporting of HIV cases have some AIDS and privacy activists alarmed - because they fear people won't want to get tested for the virus that causes AIDS if their names get sent to the state and feds merely when they ask for a test at a routine medical exam with lab work, says the Associated Press.
The new federal guidelines came out Thursday. They instruct the states to report HIV cases similar to full-blown AIDS cases, and it's mandatory if they want federal HIV surveillance funding, the AP says.
This is the latest step by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track where and how the virus which causes AIDS is spreading, the AP says. The CDC believes up to 900,000 Americans live with HIV, with about 297,000 of them actually having AIDS.
The CDC started recommending states tally HIV cases and AIDS cases in 1997. States reported AIDS cases by patient name or ID number since 1981. The new guidelines spell out how they should report HIV as well, the AP says.
First proposed last year, the new guidelines will affect mostly people who request an HIV test during visits to their regular doctor when having lab work done which goes on their medical record, the AP says.
Most states feature clinics offering anonymous HIV tests and home-testing kits can be bought over the counter at numerous drug stores - but now AIDS activists are afraid people will not get tested for fear their names will be reported to the state, the AP says, even though the CDC is urging states to pass laws making it a felony to disclose the names.
"I see any disincentive to undergo HIV testing as a problem," Daniel Zingale, executive director of AIDS Action, a Washington-based advocacy group, to the AP. "Anything that's keeping people away from knowing their HIV status is a bad idea unless there's a compelling reason to do it."
Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, deputy director of the CDC's center for HIV prevention, tells the AP that reporting names is the best way to HIV data is accurate and that the names will be well-protected.
The names will be kept in a database that requires two passwords - one held by the state, the other by the CDC. And the CDC is urging states to pass laws making it a felony to release such names.
For now, 34 states report HIV cases already, and with names attached; four others, theAP says, use ID codes. Washington state uses a combination of the two. The other eleven states and the District of Columbia do not report HIV.
