U.S. Agency Urges Routine AIDS Test for Some Groups

Federal health officials Thursday recommended routine AIDS testing for the sex partners of AIDS virus carriers, people with other sexually transmitted diseases and users of injectable narcotics, among other groups.

The Public Health Service’s official AIDS testing recommendations, issued after months of public debate, stressed that individuals in those categories have the right to refuse to take the tests.

The agency recommended that, although “individuals have the right to decline,” health professionals should begin “routine (AIDS) counseling and testing” for:

--Patients with sexually transmitted diseases.

--Drug users who injected their narcotics.

--Women of childbearing age at risk of AIDS infection, chiefly through drug abuse or sexual contact.

--Patients infected with tuberculosis, which can be compounded by an AIDS infection.

--Sex partners of infected people.

--Those sharing drug needles with infected people.

‘High Risk Behaviors’

The national Centers for Disease Control said the goal of the testing is “to reduce further spread of infection,” with priority on “persons who are most likely to be infected or who practice high-risk behaviors.”

In addition, the Public Health Service recommended the availability of AIDS testing for anyone who believes he or she is at risk for AIDS, and the testing of male and female prostitutes by local and state jurisdictions.

The agency called also for prison systems to study means of testing their inmates--federal inmates are already under a testing program--and for state and local officials to decide about routine, or even mandatory, AIDS tests for engaged couples, taking into account “the prevalence of HIV (AIDS virus) infection in the area.”

Mandatory Testing Omitted

The federal government’s recommendations do not include several controversial proposals discussed at a public meeting in February--mandatory testing for hospital patients, engaged couples and other groups.

In the recommendations released Thursday by the CDC, federal health officials called for “every reasonable effort . . . to improve confidentiality of test results.”

Although confidentiality is crucial to increasing the number of people being tested for AIDS, “it is of equal or greater importance that the public perceive that persons found to be positive will not be subject to inappropriate discrimination,” the CDC said.