Nevada Panel Requests Funds to Test for AIDS in Prostitutes

The Nevada Board of Examiners has recommended an emergency appropriation of $139,000 to begin testing prostitutes in Nevada’s legal brothels for AIDS.

State Health Director Catherine Lowe said Friday that the women were not considered a high-risk group but that “a risk exists” nonetheless. In five years of testing, she said, no prostitute in Nevada’s 35 legal bordellos has been found to have acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

She said two prostitutes who worked the streets contracted the disease and one of them died.

The women in the brothels are tested weekly for venereal disease, and the new test for AIDS will be added if the requested $139,000 is approved by the Legislative Interim Finance Committee, which will meet later this year.

There are 250 to 400 prostitutes working in the counties that license bordellos. Lowe said the number varies.

Orange County Concern

In California, Orange County health officials were concerned about 10 prostitutes believed to be carrying the virus, although they said the chance of spreading AIDS through heterosexual affairs is “very low.”

“I think that any time there’s a prostitute (who is infected) with a number of contacts, there is a matter of concern,” said Dr. Thomas Prendergast, deputy director of the county’s disease control section of the Health Department.

The 10 Orange County prostitutes, all intravenous drug users, were discovered to have antibodies to the virus in their blood during voluntary testing of more than 400 female drug users in the County Jail since March.

Of the 14,125 AIDS cases reported in the United States, 142 are believed to have been caused by heterosexual contact.