To make matters worse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the majority of infected Americans are not aware that they are HIV positive, according to Dr. Kenneth Mayer, director of the Brown University AIDS Program. Eckerle said that, unfortunately, she thinks there are some Brown students who are infected but do not know. Those infected students are not only unable to take advantage of treatment options but may also transmit the virus to others. Health Services administers around 900 tests yearly, McMillan said, and she guessed that perhaps a quarter of tests are for students who have been tested before. Brown students also go elsewhere to be tested, although it is not known how many do this, she said.
Most treatments force patients to structure their day around taking dozens of pills.
She said that one benefit of testing is that it starts a dialogue about sexually-transmitted diseases. One student who got tested for HIV spoke with The Herald on condition of anonymity. Hopefully, if enough students have conversations about HIV before enjoying sexual intimacy, there will be fewer positive HIV tests to have to deal with. McMillan said that Health Services could be doing more about getting students to think about whether they need testing and what their testing options are. Men escape that.