Abstract
To the Editor.— We read with interest the March 17 JAMA article by Dr Gostin 1 entitled Public Health Strategies for Confronting AIDS [acquired immunodeficiency syndrome] and felt a need to share with you a problem related to quarantining AIDS patients in state mental hospitals. The prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus seropositivity (enzymelinked immunosorbent assay and Western blot test positivity) among hospitalized patients in a study of sentinel hospitals throughout the country was 0.3%. 2 The prevalence of positivity among all patients tested through the South Dakota Health Department's laboratory during 1988 was 0.32% (R. Louchart, RN, personal communication, February 1989). The South Dakota Human Services Center, with a census of nearly 430 patients, is the sole general psychiatric hospital in the state. Staff physicians there did no routine testing for AIDS during 1988, but rather performed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays on patients deemed to be at high risk. High-risk status
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