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India to start HIV testing military recruits
SHILLONG, India - India’s president said all new recruits to the country’s armed forces would be tested for the HIV virus after the deaths of some 200 soldiers due to AIDS in the past two years. “The military will be testing for HIV in new recruits and undertake pre-natal examination of wives of personnel in the services,” President Abdul Kalam said at an army seminar in Shillong.

Kalam is the supreme commander of India’s armed forces of 1.3 million personnel, one of the largest militaries in the world. Officials said the HIV testing would start in October. India has an estimated 5.134 million people infected with the HIV virus in 2004, second to South Africa which has the world’s highest HIV/AIDS caseload.

“HIV/AIDS has become a security threat to India,” Lieutenant-General Bhupinder Singh told the seminar. “AIDS is no less destructive than war itself. We want to keep our force fighting fit.”Government records show more than 300 soldiers are currently infected with the HIV virus.
I'm posting this because I don't know the practice of the US armed forces and other western militaries. Are we screening routinely and the Indians are now just doing what we do, or is this something new?

Posted by: Steve White 2005-09-25
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=130479