Jail Suspends Voluntary AIDS Tests Pending Study of Prop. 96

County health officers have temporarily suspended voluntary AIDS testing of jail inmates while state and county attorneys evaluate the impact of a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 96, that was passed in November.

The measure requires that jail authorities be notified about any inmate who is found to have a communicable disease. Dr. Rex Ehling, county health officer, said Thursday that the county is trying to determine whether the requirement is that inmates who test positive for AIDS antibodies be identified to all jail personnel or only to medical employees, those most likely to have contact with a prisoner’s blood.

Ehling said the issue, which is faced by all county jails in the state, should be resolved within a few weeks. The jail testing program will be resumed then, he said.

“We are in the process of deciding how we are going to do this,” Ehling said. “We need to define how that information is shared.”

Robert MacLeod, general manager of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, said Thursday that there are strong feelings about what the definition should be. Sheriff’s deputies, he said, insist that they be alerted to any inmates who test positive for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Deputies Bitten by Inmates

Before Proposition 96 was passed, MacLeod said, some deputies had been bitten or spit upon by jail inmates and had no legal means of determining whether the prisoner might have AIDS, even if the prisoners had been tested for AIDS by jail medical authorities.

Several deputies have been tested for AIDS after altercations with inmates, but none has acquired the disease, MacLeod said.

“It’s a big issue,” he said. “The deputy and his family have a right to know what they’re dealing with.”

One provision of Proposition 96 seems to allow a judge to force an inmate to take an AIDS test if “body fluids were transferred” during a contact with jail personnel.

Ehling said the voluntary testing program will be resumed even if the attorneys determine that all jail personnel must be informed of test results, though some prisoners might avoid the test because of the greater disclosure.

Most of the AIDS cases that have been identified in Orange County are a result of sexual contact, Ehling said. In some parts of the country, transmission by intravenous drug users is a more serious problem.

Dr. Tom Prendergast, the county’s epidemiologist, said voluntary testing for women inmates was started in 1985 because of an “initial concern that intravenous-drug-using prostitutes would spread the disease.”