DC to Opt for Routine HIV Testing

According to Saturday’s Washington Post, the District of Columbia is launching a new routine HIV testing campaign aimed at all people ages 14 to 84.

The city-wide campaign, which appears to be unprecedented in its breadth, will target 400,000 men, women and teenagers and encourage them to learn their HIV status through an oral swab that delivers results in 20 minutes.

Organizers want the rapid test to become as common a part of any medical exam as blood-pressure monitoring or a cholesterol check. The hope is that the results, especially if positive, would influence a person’s sexual behavior and motivate him or her to seek treatment.

Clearly an aggressive response to a massive public health problem (the District has the highest rate of AIDS incidence in the nation at 179.2 cases per 100,000 people), this move also puts the city squarely into the center of an ongoing global debate about the most appropriate strategies for HIV/AIDS testing. There have been marked shifts in the conversation and language in recent years from voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) to opt-out and routine counseling and testing (C&T) to some who advocate mandatory testing in high prevalence settings (see previous post here). While donors pour millions into testing strategies overseas, it will be interesting to see how it plays out here at home.