Orange County Health Care Agency
For Immediate Release: June 25, 2014
Contact: Nicole Stanfield, nstanfield@ochca.com, (714) 834-2178
‘Take the Test, Take Control’
National HIV Testing Day
(Santa Ana) – June 27 marks National HIV Testing Day, which helps promote testing and early diagnosis of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. There are 6,215 individuals living with HIV disease in Orange County with over 250 people being diagnosed with HIV each year. There are an additional estimated 1,364 people living in Orange County who have HIV and don’t know it – many of whom will develop AIDS before realizing they are HIV infected.
Of the 131 AIDS cases diagnosed in 2013, 42.0% (55) were concurrently diagnosed with HIV, indicating that the individual was living with HIV for a long time before the diagnosis. On average, individuals who are concurrently diagnosed are estimated to have been living with HIV for more than 10 years. Many of these people had been to a medical setting like an emergency room, a community health center, or their doctor, but were not tested for HIV. Continue reading