Call to action

Donna Futterman, director of adolescent AIDS program, at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York, didn’t waste much time in pinpointing problems with HIV testing in America.

The successes, she said, were all pilot projects.

``How do we move forward to make HIV testing available for everyone?’’ she said. ``… We’re still in the phase of pilots. It’s one hospital here, or a city may have a few emergency departments that offer routine testing, but we’ve learned a lot from the pilots on the steps that need to happen to scale up.’’


She continued with a challenge to those running health systems: ``Listen, folks. HIV is a disease. A HIV test is a test, and who is more responsible than fighting HIV that the medical sector. It is our duty and we must mobilize to make it happen.’’