by Bob Roehr
"This is a dangerous moment … our President has yet to say the word AIDS, 150 days now" into his administration, said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "The silence is deafening."
He noted that when Obama recently spoke before the American Medical Association, the President mentioned a list of preventable diseases and HIV/AIDS was not among them.
A national AIDS strategy was not reflected in his budget proposal. "From what I've been seeing, this administration is not concerned with HIV/AIDS," Weinstein said. "… It almost seems like a studious effort to avoid the subject altogether."
"The Democrats on Capitol Hill are not mobilized," he added. "There was money in the stimulus package for HIV testing that was removed."
Weinstein said, "We are going to have to mobilize people who care about this issue to get not only the President but this Congress engaged. I don't hear the leadership of Congress speaking out either."
Weinstein called National HIV Testing Day, June 27, a great opportunity to raise the issue again. "We have not focused on the geography in this country where the problem is growing the fastest," he said. "We know we can't fight a disease if we don't know who has it and we know that in every disease early detection is the key."
Weinstein said that most new infections in this country come from people who don't know their status. "The most critical issue in fighting AIDS in the world today is reducing the number of people who are undiagnosed," he insisted. "That is going to require drastic change in the paradigm of how we test people for HIV." He urged that testing become a routine part of all health care.
AHF is sending "a caravan of testing vans" from Los Angeles across the southern tier of the United States to offer free testing and raise awareness along the ways. It will wind up in Washington, D.C. on June 27.
It is a prelude to the organization opening an HIV primary care clinic in the city at the George Washington University Hospital. He called Washington "ground zero" because it has the highest rate of HIV in the country.
Weinstein recently observed a focus group on HIV testing where the overall view of the participants was, "We are afraid of being testing and we don't want to do it, but we will if you don't make us wait, you don't ask us 50 questions about the most intimate parts of our personal lives, you don't have to go to a skanky place, and you don't judge us."
"Right now, only 1 percent of the federal AIDS budget is spent on testing," Weinstein said in conclusion. "That has to radically shift."
