Dropping by the pharmacy later? After you pick up your aspirin, tampons, and gummy bears, think about taking a minute to get an HIV test.
Thanks to a new pilot project that the CDC announced today, getting tested for HIV might soon be as easy as grabbing your seasonal allergy meds. Pharmacists and retail store clinic staff in 24 communities will be trained to give customers confidential rapid HIV tests. By providing testing in pharmacies, the CDC hopes to make HIV testing more available and less anxiety-provoking for Americans. The pilot communities (12 urban, 12 rural) will be located strategically in places with a higher burden of HIV.
Since 2006, the CDC has recommended that everyone be tested for HIV sometime in their lives. But researchers estimate that 1 in 5 of the 1.1 million people infected with HIV don’t know that they are infected. The states with the highest numbers of people living with HIV are clustered in the northeast and the southeast. The rate of new HIV infections fell in the 1990s, but since then, it has leveled off in the general population. Worse, new HIV infections have risen in certain populations.
Men who have sex with men are still the group that is most affected by HIV and account for more than half of the new HIV infections each year. By racial group, African-Americans suffer most from the HIV epidemic. Even African-Americans with no traditional risk factors (like multiple sex partners and IV drug use) are considered at high risk for HIV infection because of the prevalence of HIV has risen so high in their communities. The CDC estimates are shocking: 1 in 16 black men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetimes.
The CDC press release about the pilot project is here.
A nifty interactive map for investigating STD trends is here.
