by B.J. Caldwell, Educator

An article in the Ottawa Citizen online edition on Nov. 8th highlights a pilot project aiming to reduce the number of people who are unkowingly infected with HIV by vastly increasing the numbers of HIV tests offered. The Seek and Treat project is being tried in select cities in the U.S. as well. During this project anyone who enters a hospital, lab, clinic, and perhaps their doctor's office will be likely offered an HIV test.

The effectiveness?:

British research has demonstrated a cost benefit when the prevalence of diagnosis is one or two out of every 1,000 tests.

"We expect our diagnostic yield be higher than that," Gustafson said.

Detecting and treating HIV, especially in its early stage, helps reduce medical costs and prevents further transmission. Highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) suppresses the virus to undetectable levels. B.C. research has shown that 40 per cent of those who died of HIV-related causes between 1997 and 2005 had never received the life-saving medication. Citing U.S. Center for Disease Control research, Gustafson said lifetime HIV treatment costs nearly $400,000 per patient, but patients diagnosed early enough require less treatment, saving the health-care system up to $61,000 per patient.

About 14 per cent of people newly diagnosed have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis, which suggests they ignored symptoms or had no symptoms before they were tested.

The screening program will be evaluated for effectiveness, including cost benefits, and if it is deemed to be successful, it is expected it will become part of routine health care.