Editorial: STD testing upgraded

Health officials recently announced that the state of North Carolina will cover the cost of providing a faster and more reliable HIV test for Duke students. In addition to expediting the HIV testing process, this state subsidy should also indirectly improve the testing services available to students concerned with STDs other than HIV.

Officials at Duke Student Health Services have long stressed the importance of safe sex, and encourage those who engage in sexual activity to be tested regularly. Alarmingly, in the recent past, students deemed to be at "low-risk" for STDs were often denied tests by doctors and nurses at University clinics. The rationale behind the denials was that STD tests were too expensive to be administered to individuals that have not engaged in risky sexual practices.

Essentially, testing these students was not considered cost-efficient. However, this policy is inconsistent with common knowledge--any kind of sexual contact, safe or not, puts one at risk. Refusing to test individuals is irresponsible. To the University's credit, students requesting HIV testing were never turned away.

Under the auspices of the new state-sponsored HIV testing plan, all forms of testing at Duke should improve. The new tests return the results of HIV screenings reliably, and within three weeks, as opposed to the old process, which took six to eight weeks. Further, if the initial test comes back negative, the state will assume the cost of additional tests, to ensure that the virus does not develop in successive months. This testing procedure was not implemented by the University before because it was determined to be too expensive.

With the costs of HIV testing covered, the University should devote resources to making other STD tests readily available to anyone that asks for them. Even in the absence of the new state-subsidies, STD testing should be available to all students simply upon request.

Students themselves are best-equipped to judge the risk-level of their sexual contact, and their risk for STDs. Should a student take the initiative to request a test, of any kind, health officials have a responsibility to administer it.

This will stop students from having to create fictitious sexual histories to get tested, and will hopefully prevent those individuals who have contracted STDs from going undiagnosed and untreated, and spreading the disease to others.

The health officials at the University do a commendable job of attempting to educate students about the pitfalls of sexual activity. Due largely to their efforts, HIV cases at Duke have not increased, while cases throughout the rest of North Carolina have gone up considerably. Now that the realities of STDs have hit home with the student population, all that remains is to continue to make testing as accessible as possible.