For Immediate Release

Media Contact: Justin Burke - 213.201.1525

EMAIL:jburke@apla.org

AIDS PROJECT LOS ANGELES WELCOMES ORAQUICK - RAPID HIV TEST
CALLS IT AN OVERDUE DEVICE IN FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

Los Angeles, November 7, 2002-- AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) today welcomed the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of a new rapid HIV testing device, OraQuick. The test is easy to use, produces reliable results in 20 minutes, and can eliminate the current weeklong waiting periods for test results. Under current approval, OraQuick can only be administered by certified health care workers.

“The availability of rapid HIV tests like OraQuick is long overdue in the United States. Rapid HIV testing has the ability to save lives and to help prevent transmission. Although this approval is an important step, these tests still will not be available for street outreach, at commercial sex venues, and for other hard to reach populations because the law requires that the tests must be administered by certified health care workers,” said Daniel C. Montoya, Director of Government Affairs, AIDS Project Los Angeles. “We know that once people learn they are HIV positive, they reduce risky behaviors that can lead to transmission and they can access care and treatment.”

APLA now urges the FDA and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) to “waive” classification of OraQuick under the Clinical Laboratories Improvement Act (CLIA), and to approve an equally rapid confirmatory or back-up test. Waiver status for OraQuick would make the test more affordable and accessible to family doctors, emergency rooms, HIV prevention providers and publicly-funded counseling and testing programs. Approval of a rapid back-up test will allow confirmation of positive test results to be done in a single session.

“We must make these tests available where people access their health care and for outreach workers,” Montoya said. “There are plenty of people at risk who aren’t necessarily going to seek out an HIV testing center.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 850,000 and 950,000 Americans have HIV, and a quarter of them don't know it. Some 600 positive HIV test results go undelivered in California each year, most often because individuals fail to return to testing sites for their results. There are an estimated 30-45,000 people with HIV living in Los Angeles County; around a quarter of those individuals do not know their HIV status.

AIDS Project Los Angeles, which this year marks 20 years of prevention, advocacy and service, is one of the oldest and largest AIDS service organizations in the United States.