The following is part of a series of op-eds placed in newspapers in New York State by NBLCA:

By C. Virginia Fields

When the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS (NBLCA) brought our New York affiliates to Albany in February of 2010 for their annual meeting, affiliate leaders talked about accomplishments in the past year and challenges in the coming year.

Those leaders have since returned to their communities – Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, New York City and Nassau County – to begin confronting those challenges. But they left one of the biggest challenges back here in Albany; in the State Legislature, to be specific.

One of the most basic steps we can all take in the war against AIDS is finding out our HIV status. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, more than one million Americans are living with HIV or AIDS, and one in five do not know they are infected. Those who are HIV-positive and don’t know it are ticking time bombs wandering free in society.

An estimated 50 to 70 percent of new sexually transmitted cases are spread by people who don’t realize they are infected. Medical experts say people can carry the virus for 10 years or more and not be aware they are infected.

You would think that everyone would be doing all that we can to make it easy to get tested for HIV and know their status. Sadly, that is not the case.

In about half of the states in this country, including New York, a separate form must be signed specifically granting permission to test for HIV. Patients do not get HIV tests as part of regular physical checkup, even though the general consent form they sign allows their blood to be tested for other disorders such as high cholesterol, diabetes and prostrate problems.

For more than three years, NBLCA and other community-based organizations have been trying to amend Article 27F of the New York State Public Health Law to require routine HIV testing in all appropriate medical settings.

Treating HIV and AIDS as something special – something that must be handled separately and distinctly from other medical tests – is based on a stigma that was misplaced from the start. Though HIV-positive individuals often have been victims of unnecessary fear and discrimination, sticking one’s head in the sand was never a wise method to deal with the disease.

And the stigma is based on increasingly obsolete stereotypes anyway. HIV and AIDS long ago spread beyond gay men and intravenous drug users. Those groups are still at risk, but for new HIV/AIDS infections the primary trend is people of color. In New York, three quarters of new AIDS infections are among Blacks and Hispanics.

We are only trying to get New York to do what the Centers for Disease Control recommends. That federal agency initially recommended HIV testing only if a person were in a high-risk category, such as injecting drug users, those with multiple sex partners and gay men. However, in 2006, the CDC recommended testing everyone 13 to 65 during regular office visits, in emergency rooms and at other health care facilities.

Gov. David Paterson, who was among the speakers at our annual affiliate meeting, pointed out that New York has more AIDS cases than any other state. As the governor himself put it, New York is the “epicenter” for AIDS.

Gov. Paterson reported that AIDS diagnoses in New York dropped from 14,000 in 1993 to 6,000 last year. Perhaps statistics like these – along with stories of people living years with HIV – have fueled complacency.

But we have to keep in mind that there is still no cure for AIDS. If we continue to be complacent, we could easily lose the gains we have made.

C. Virginia Fields is the President and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS (www.nblca.org).