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Half of U.S. adults have been tested for HIV: CDC

Last Updated: 2003-06-12 15:04:18 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Nearly 50 percent of American adults younger than 65 have been tested for HIV, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Thursday.

According to the agency, the numbers show a need to further expand voluntary HIV testing, as well as access to counseling and treatment to prevent transmission of the virus that causes AIDS.

The 50 percent estimate is based on data collected through the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. In 2001, more than 170,000 individuals in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were asked whether they'd been tested for HIV, and their reasons for doing so.

More than half of respondents in Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands said they had been tested.

But testing prevalence was below 40 percent in Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia, according to findings in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

In general, women were more likely to have sought testing than men, the agency found.

One of the CDC's HIV-prevention goals for 2005 is to boost the proportion of HIV-positive Americans who know they're infected to 95 percent -- from the current estimate of 70 percent.

As of December 2001, more than 816,000 cases of AIDS in the U.S. had been reported to the CDC.

Copyright 2002 Reuters.