A statewide shortage of the oral HIV test OraSure has forced Penn State's University Health Service's Office of Health Promotion and Education to stop administering free HIV tests.

The Office of Health Promotion and Education has suspended free testing until the end of October, University Health Services supervisor Diana Ramos said.

But students can still be tested at the University Health Services (UHS) clinic for a fee of about $50, she said. HIV and AIDS counseling services are also still available, she said.

Ramos said UHS has always offered HIV testing for a fee because both the OraSure test, which is a saliva sample, and a blood test have been offered.

Until Sept. 7, UHS's Office of Health Promotion and Education offered the OraSure test for free through funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

UHS Marketing Manager Ellen Nagy said the Office of Health Promotion and Education is a separate organization that has a special Health Department grant that allows Penn State to provide free HIV testing and counseling. Only the oral test has been available for free, Nagy said.

Now that there is an OraSure test shortage, Ramos said students who want to get tested at UHS can only receive the $30 blood test. An additional $20 fee will be charged for the visit, she said.

"We haven't seen any problems because students can still get tested for free at other locations around State College, like Planned Parenthood," she said. "But they're only offering the blood-drawn tests."

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood in State College, Tiffany Pelton, said the agency does not offer the OraSure test but does offer a blood test free for students.

Penn State Global AIDS Initiative President Katie Koehler wrote in an e-mail message the group hopes the UHS's Health Promotion and Education office will be able to offer free testing again.

"It is very disappointing," she said. "We are hoping that UHS will be able to perform free HIV testing again soon."

Some students are concerned about the effect paying for tests will have on the number of students who will go to get tested.

"If college students could spend $50 to go tanning or $50 on an HIV test, they'd go tanning," Mary Kate DeCoursey (freshman-communications) said.

Others voiced concern because many college students are on a tight budget.

"College students are poor," Jonathan Drozd (senior-information science and technology) said. "They should figure out how to have it still be offered for free and get more of whatever they are short of."

Ramos said that she received word yesterday that OraSure should be available again by the end of October.

"The producers of the serum [SmithKline Beecham] are doing some quality assurance testing, and that's why there's a shortage right now," Ramos said. "Hopefully by the end of October they'll receive word from the FDA and we'll be back in business."

Nagy said the administration was not aware of the shortage in the tests.

Department of Health hotline Director Jackie Witkin said as of 2003, about 100 cases of AIDS had been reported in Centre County since 1980.

In 2002, there were 30,368 reported cases of AIDS in Pennsylvania, she said.

"HIV statistics are much harder numbers to track because places like Philadelphia don't require people to name the disease they have and a lot of people go undiagnosed," she said.