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A bill proposed by Washington, D.C., council member Marion Barry (D), which “has been stalled in committee since July,” would mandate HIV testing and counseling for all district jail inmates upon admission, the Washington Post reports. Since 2006, the district has administered “voluntary HIV tests to all inmates upon admission, although they can opt out,” and “99 percent, or more than 27,000, inmates have opted to take the test, according to the Department of Corrections,” the newspaper reports. Walter Smith, executive director of D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, Corrections Director Devon Brown and HIV/AIDS Administration Director Shannon Hader all oppose mandatory testing, according to the article. “Twenty-one states test inmates for HIV when they are admitted to prison, according to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. But most states test only with an inmate’s consent or upon court order” (Ricard, 8/30).

This information was reprinted from dailyreports.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily U.S. HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at dailyreports.kff.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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“A $3 million cut to the [North Carolina AIDS Drug Assistance Program] in the 2009-2010 budget of the state Department of Public Health means that the usual six-month supply of AIDS drugs will be cut,” and a “month’s worth of drugs will remain stockpiled instead,” the Greensboro News & Record reports. “The cut shouldn’t affect patients who need the drugs, said Addison Ore, director of the Triad Health Project, which advocates for the roughly 1,600 people with HIV/AIDS in the county. ‘The HIV/AIDS drug assistance program is really solid,’ Ore said.” Jeffrey Engle, the state health director, said the stockpiling six months of drugs was adopted when there were fewer available AIDS drugs on the market. “But more manufacturers now make drugs for AIDS patients, Engle said, than when state health workers first strived for a six-month supply,” according to the article (Witt, 9/2).

This information was reprinted from dailyreports.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily U.S. HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at dailyreports.kff.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.