Hoping to reduce
barriers to HIV antibody testing and increase the number
of state residents who are screened for HIV infection, the
Washington State Board of Health has revised its HIV
counseling and notification rules, The
Seattle Times reports. The new rules eliminate
the mandatory minimum level of counseling physicians
and other health care providers must give to those seeking
HIV antibody tests, instead allowing the counseling to
be tailored to each person's HIV risk history.
The new rules also move from doctors to local health
agencies the responsibility of notifying the sexual partners
of newly infected people.
Physicians in the
state have said the old counseling and notification
requirements took up too much of their time and made
offering HIV antibody tests to their patients too
burdensome.
"Our goal is to
dramatically increase testing and make it more
routine," Tom Locke, chairman of the health board, told the
Times. "To do that we needed to drastically
revise the rules."
Washington has
recorded more than 15,000 HIV cases since 1982. Health
officials estimate that there are currently 2,000 state
residents who are HIV-positive yet unaware of their
infections because they have not taken HIV antibody
tests.
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