Hospital Gets Funding for Expansion of HIV Testing

In February, a local hospital will begin testing emergency room patients for HIV with the help of a grant aimed at decreasing the number of infected people who do not realize they have the disease.

Nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center will offer a same-day screening using either a blood or tissue sample to emergency room patients who say they are HIV negative, or that they are unsure about their status.

The center will receive $220,000 to fund the program at two emergency departments in Berkeley and Oakland, said hospital spokesperson Carolyn Kemp.

The funding represents one-third of a grant awarded in October by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to three Bay Area facilities. San Francisco General Hospital and the Alameda County Medical Center will use the money to expand their existing emergency room HIV screening services.

Michelle Roland, chief of the Office of AIDS at the California Department of Health Services, said the program is the result of a new concept in HIV screening and prevention.

Testing used to be the conducted in community centers and medical clinics, Roland said, but has now expanded to emergency rooms as a result of a large effort to make screening easily available to the public.

Approximately 25 percent of Bay Area residents infected with HIV do not know they have the virus.

“(The program is) another tool to help people to know their HIV status,” she said.

Steve O’Brien, medical director of the Alta Bates Summit East Bay AIDS Center, said between 10,000 and 20,000 HIV patients receive treatment in the Bay Area. He estimates 5,000 to 6,000 people are unaware they are infected.

One-third of patients in the region are women, and more than one-half of the patients are black, O’Brien said.

The gay population is most at risk for the disease, he said, adding that recently there has been an increase in the rate of HIV infection among heterosexuals.

O’Brien said the grant was given to Alta Bates because its East Bay AIDS Center is the largest HIV-prevention program in the East Bay.

The grant also aims to help the black population. Fifty percent of the patients at the center are black, he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are planning to provide funding for two additional years of the program, he said.

O’Brien said he is pleased to see the government fulfilling its promise to allocate funding to the region to increase screening for HIV.

“It’s exciting to see the government put money where its mouth is,” he said.

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