It seems New York city is hell bent on finding the HIV status of all the residents. The recent proposal to test the HIV status of every individual turning up at a clinic or hospital is ample testimony of the trend. However, a lot of practical issues have to be looked into.
For one thing, every person needs pre-test counseling. They have to be informed about the whole test procedure and the implications of a positive or negative result. This in itself is a significant task considering the varied health problems of the people. If a person comes to a doctor for spraining his ankle, the whole HIV testing procedure will be a nuisance for the person. Their will be hardly any people ready to invest so much of their time, when it wouldn’t have any bearing on the present problem.
If we look on the other side, even doctors will be hard pushed to follow this rule, considering the therapeutic uselessness of the test. But the benefits of such a system are difficult to ignore. This mandatory testing will bring out a significant number of undiagnosed cases into light. Not only does this help to consolidate HIV stats, but it is helpful to the patient to start anti-retroviral therapy in the pre symptomatic stage itself. Studies have shown that starting anti-retroviral therapy before onset of symptoms has decreased the morbidity associated with this disease. Even if anti-retroviral therapy is not started, behavioral modification keeping in view the nature of the disease is possible.
Moreover, this policy will decrease the disease phobia in the people, because they would have been counseled at least once in their lives. This will remove the many wrong conceptions about the disease. And that in turn will eliminate the social stigma around this disease.
Source: usatoday
