As prominent AIDS advocates called Thursday for Los Angeles County officials to require condoms on porn sets or shut down production, more questions arose about why the Public Health Department has not investigated 18 HIV cases reported in the last five years by the clinic that serves the adult film industry.
"L.A. County public health officials have been asleep at the switch with regard to monitoring HIV and STD prevention and testing in the region's porn industry," said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "It really seems very, very clear that they do have the authority. Why aren't they doing anything?"
Officials from the Public Health Department declined requests for interviews.
The previously unpublicized cases came to light after news last week that a female porn performer had tested HIV positive this month. All 18 were reported to the county by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a San Fernando Valley-based clinic that serves the porn industry, since a 2004 HIV outbreak shut down production for a month.
AIM clinic officials have said the cases never became public because all were detected in aspiring performers who ended up not entering the business or in non-performers who used their testing services.
In recent days, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's top public health officer, said the county did little investigation into the HIV cases since the 2004 outbreak.
He said the burden of notifying potential partners of people who test positive for HIV rests with the patient's medical clinic or doctor and that the current system and laws do not grant the county health department that kind of authority.
But, according to the California Department of Public Health, local health officers do have the authority to offer partner notification services for HIV, although they are not required to do so.
Many public health experts view notifying partners as key to preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. In November 2008, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report strongly recommending that health departments take an active role in partner notification services of newly diagnosed HIV patients.
Other counties in California already have moved to take on a bigger role in partner notification, which gives health officials the opportunity to better understand who else may have been exposed.
