Since Texas Cut Planned Parenthood’s HIV Program, Houston Hasn't Tested a Single Person

Since Texas Cut Planned Parenthood’s HIV Program, Houston Hasn't Tested a Single Person


Since Texas Cut Planned Parenthood’s HIV Program, Houston Hasn't Tested a Single Person


In a political gambit to prove that they love fetuses more than anything else in the whole world, Texas lawmakers have put their constituents at higher risk of an HIV outbreak. The Texas Observer reports that since the state ended its 28-year HIV-prevention contract with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which covers the Houston area, at the end of last year, one of the three counties that was supposed to take over the program hasn’t conducted a single HIV test.

PPGC used to get $600,000 per year from the Department of State Health Services to provide HIV testing, prevention education, and condoms to Texas residents. In the wake of last year’s attack on Planned Parenthood by video-camera–wielding anti-abortion activists who have now been indicted in Texas on felony charges, the state opted to let PPGC’s contract expire and divert those funds to three county health departments in Harris, Galveston, and Fort Bend counties.


Harris, which encompasses the city of Houston, got the bulk of the HIV-prevention funds: $250,000. In the five months since it took on the contract, it hasn’t done a single thing. Galveston and Fort Bend began testing patients in March and May, respectively. PPGC estimates that, in those five months, it would have already provided 2,900 HIV tests and given out 165,000 condoms. The former head of PPGC’s HIV-prevention initiative, who’d served in that role for 13 years, was laid off with her seven-person staff when the state ended its contract with Planned Parenthood at the end of last year.

This gap in essential public-health services, which anti–Planned Parenthood state officials promised would not occur in the handoff, is doubly shameful because Harris County has an HIV-diagnosis rate that’s almost twice as high as the Texas average. Nearly 23,000 HIV-positive people live in Harris County, where 25 percent of Texas’ new HIV diagnoses crop up, the Observer reports, and Planned Parenthood played an integral role in identifying new cases to help prevent transmission:


http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/06/10/since_texas_cut_planned_parenthood_s_hiv_program_houston_hasn_t_tested_a.html