Troubling Trend in Atlanta's AIDS Battle

Atlanta healthcare professionals are urging more people to get HIV tests after a Grady Hospital study showed that over half of their newly-diagnosed HIV patients have been infected for so long they’ve already developed AIDS.

Grady began routinely administering HIV tests to patients in 2013 and has discovered HIV in about one percent of each year’s emergency room population, WABE reports. Somewhere around eight percent of the population living immediately around the hospital has HIV or AIDS.

The late diagnosis problem isn’t unique to the city. Statewide, about one in every three new HIV diagnoses come from patients who already have AIDS. Across the U.S., about 14 percent of people living with HIV or AIDS do not know that they are infected.

The director of an AIDS care center in Atlanta told WABE that in her experience, the young people who make up the majority of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in Atlanta do not have a regular doctor to test them, and don’t have insurance to pay for regular doctor visits.