Local HIV Prevention HIV and Government Responsibility

¶ … Local HIV Prevention

HIV and Government Responsibility

HIV is a public health concern that has existed since the 1970's in the United States (Colorado Department of Public Health, 2010). As in other places in the world, containment and control over the spread of the disease has been a primary concern to both the federal, state, and local governments. In the United States, the trends for prevention and control of the disease have rested primarily on educating the public about the disease, reporting those with the disease through a federal database, testing all donated blood, and emphasizing consistent testing of various at risk groups within the population.

The first area where health officials are preventing the HIV epidemic is through public education. On the state and local levels, schools are required to educate adolescents on the risk of contracting HIV and the common risk factors (Colorado Department of Public Health). Additionally, many states require that pediatricians and family physicians encourage parents to further remind and educate their children on the risks of HIV infection through the most common methods including sharing needles and unprotected sexual intercourse. Many states have also attempted to take the reporting requirement even further in requiring that doctors report and educate the risk of disease to HIV sufferer's sexual partners (Lin, 2005). Thus far, these attempts have been struck down in the courts as a violation of physician/patient confidentiality.

The second way in which local municipalities are attempting to contain the spread of HIV is through a medical reporting system. Initially only certain states participated in the reporting system, but currently all 50 states are using the reporting system as a means of tracking patients that are infected with HIV (Lin). This reporting system ensures that hospital, physicians, and staff are made aware of the patient's condition and can take extra precautions to prevent infection and cross-contamination. In order to keep the information confidential, only physicians and hospitals have access to the database. This is the requirement to ensure that those suffering from the disease are not stigmatized within society (Herek, 1999).

Another way that the spread of HIV is being prevented is through testing all donated blood with a standard HIV test. While it is unfortunate, many people will donate blood without knowing whether or not they carry the HIV virus (Colorado Department of Public Health). The result, should testing not be done, would be a much higher contamination rate and spread of HIV and other blood-born diseases.