BUFFALO, N.Y. — Dec. 1 marks 35 years since the first World AIDS Day in 1988, and on Friday, Kaleida Health announced the renewal of a grant that allows patients at Kaleida emergency departments to be tested for HIV and Hepatitis C so they can know their status.
A grant was just renewed allowing Kaleida Health's four emergency departments to offer HIV and Hepatitis C testing. Any patient 18 to 89 years old can be tested, but you can also opt out.
Dr. Andrew Talal is one of the doctors in charge of the bloodborne virus testing program at Kaleida. He says there have been tremendous strides in medicine since the first World AIDS Day.
"HIV was really, in a way, a death sentence when I was in medical school, and I had the advantage of working with Dr. David Ho at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in the late 1990s, and we were really on the forefront of the development of the combination antiretroviral therapy which really has, as you said, made HIV a chronic condition," said Dr. Talal, who is a University at Buffalo professor of medicine.
For Hepatitis C, you can take a pill once a day for two to three months, and Dr. Talal says almost everyone is cured. According to the state health department, the case rate of Hepatitis C in Western New York went up 10-percent in 2021 compared to the year before.
Dr. Talal recently did a large study that looked at telemedicine as a way to get people connected with Hepatitis C treatment.
"90-percent of those in the telemedicine arm were cured, compared to 35-percent in the referral arm. And so the idea that this approach could also be used for HIV, for PrEP, or for treatment at a distance, is something that I think is very exciting," Dr. Talal said.
If you test positive, you'll be connected with a health care provider.
"Hopefully you're negative, but even in the case that the test is positive, we now are able to do so much to help you that there's really no reason to be apprehensive about getting tested," Dr. Talal said.
The tests are available at Buffalo General, Oishei Children's Hospital, Millard Fillmore Suburban, and DeGraff.