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AHF Criticizes Governor Brown for Veto of Hospital HIV Testing Bill (AB 521)
[October 11, 2015]

AHF Criticizes Governor Brown for Veto of Hospital HIV Testing Bill (AB 521)


Today Whitney Engeran-Cordova, Senior Director for AIDS Healthcare Foundation's (AHF) Public Health Division, issued the following statement on California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. veto of AB 521 (Adrin Nazarian, D, 46th District, Van Nuys), legislation sponsored by AHF that would have required every hospital, if it otherwise draws blood from a patient and the patient is admitted to the hospital from the emergency department, to offer to test that blood for HIV with the patient's consent.

"We are disappointed to learn of Governor Brown's veto of AB 521, pragmatic public health legislation that would have gone a long way to help California address the largely unmet CDC HIV Testing Recommendations in Healthcare Settings first issued back in 2006. The Governor's statement that we should be focus on high risk populations is contradictory to the CDC recommendations that everyone between the ages of 13 and 65 be offered routine HIV testing at least once. There are approximately 5,000 new HIV infections each year in California, and outreach and education hasn't found those new infections. Continuing to do nothing more than what we've been doing will perpetuate this epidemic, not end it. This bill would save millions more in keeping people from getting infected than it will ever cost. Unless the Governor has another plan for preventing those 5,000 new infections every year, we vow to reintroduce similar HIV testing legislation in the future."



Currently 70% of the 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States do not have their virus suppressed, meaning, for some, they have never been tested for HIV; while for others, they may know their HIV status but for whatever reason, are not in care and on lifesaving HIV antiretroviral treatment. There are approximately 5,000 new HIV infections each year in California. Making HIV testing both routine and easily accessible as part of a hospital stay would help identify and link additional HIV-positive individuals into care, thus helping us break the chain of new infections.

View the full text of Governor Brown's veto message here.


AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 492,000 individuals in 36 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook (News - Alert): www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter (News - Alert): @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare


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