Pubdate: Sun, 04 Feb 2007 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times Contact: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248 Author: Craig E. Thompson Note: Thompson is Executive Director, AIDS Project Los Angeles Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) HIV TESTING IN THE PRISONS Re: "Prison's hidden threat," editorial, Jan. 31 AIDS Project Los Angeles and other state and national HIV/AIDS advocacy groups have been working for several years to help legislators -- including Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) -- craft thoughtful bills to address HIV/AIDS in prisons. These efforts would ensure that inmates get not only HIV testing but the medical care, drug treatments and prevention tools they need, including condoms. Too often, proposed legislation has targeted the prison population as a vector of new HIV infection when available research, such as the Georgia Corrections study you cite, indicates that a majority of infected inmates are HIV-positive when they enter the corrections system. Testing inmates should help combat HIV/AIDS behind bars. But if we want to reduce the alarming HIV infection rates now being reported in communities of color, we will have to provide these communities with the same level of resources -- HIV and STD testing, care, treatment and prevention -- on the outside that Waters' bill would provide in the prisons. CRAIG E. THOMPSON Executive Director, AIDS Project Los Angeles - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman