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THURSDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) -- Even though rates of AIDS are increasing among Hispanics in Los Angeles County, Calif., few primary care health providers there are offering HIV testing or safe sex counseling to Hispanic patients, a new study finds.
Researchers conducted a survey between March 2004 and June 2004 and found that only 41 percent of primary care providers (including doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants) who serve Hispanic communities regularly offered advice about sexually transmitted diseases or safe sex to their patients during the previous six months.
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Only 36 percent of the primary care providers offered more than 20 HIV tests during that same period, even though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that doctors offer routine HIV testing to patients in areas with high rates of HIV infection. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
The study, published in the March issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association, found that 24 percent of providers had offered 11 to 20 tests, 27 percent offered one to 10 tests, and 6 percent offered no HIV tests to patients.
"What this study shows is that despite the number of new AIDS cases increasing among Hispanics in Los Angeles County, the primary care providers do not appear to be increasing their offering of HIV testing to the patients," study co-author Dr. Rosa Solorio, assistant professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a prepared statement.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about Hispanics and HIV/AIDS.
-- Robert Preidt
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