RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Ministers and public health officials have called on prison officials to routinely screen every inmate and treat those infected with the HIV virus, saying prisoners are impeding progress to end the spread of the disease.

Stopping short of that will allow an epidemic to spread unchecked, officials told The News & Observer of Raleigh.

“Prison is a chance to do intervention, and they haven’t seen that as their job,” said Dr. Peter Leone, medical director of the HIV/STD Prevention and Care Branch of the N.C. Division of Public Health.

About 700 inmates in North Carolina prisons are known to have HIV or AIDS. That’s roughly 1.8 percent of the 39,000 prisoners. No one knows how many inmates carry the virus and haven’t been detected. Some infectious disease specialists guess it’s a few hundred. Others, like Leone, suspect it could be higher.

North Carolina prisons don’t require inmates to be tested for HIV. Only those who ask for the test get it; new arrivals who admit risky behaviors such as intravenous drug use or having sex with prostitutes are encouraged to take the test.

The state does require prisoners to be tested for syphilis, another sexually transmitted disease that began plaguing North Carolina in the 1990s.

Twenty-two states, including the vast majority of states in the South, where the number of new cases are highest, require HIV testing for prisoners.

Andrew Moore, an HIV-positive Raleigh man released from prison in February, thinks North Carolina should join other states in mandating tests in prison.

“You’re going to catch the people most exposed to getting it,” Moore said. “We’re drug users. We’ve led promiscuous lives. Prison’s where you ought to be heading this off.”

Although they are not opposed to a screening requirement, prison officials said it would require money they don’t have. They estimate the annual cost of screening everyone and treating an additional load of cases at $21 million, though that estimate is based on a 10 percent infection rate, much higher than any state has seen in its prison population.

“If there’s a decision we need to change the way we do it, that’s fine,” said Boyd Bennett, director of North Carolina prisons. “But, we’re not in a position to do it on our own right now without the resources.”

North Carolina’s voluntary screening practices haven’t produced much demand for the test, particularly among men. Dr. David L. Rosen, a medical and doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found that about a quarter of men not previously diagnosed as HIV-positive in North Carolina asked to take the test when they came into prison.

Researchers at UNC plan to launch a study this summer on why inmates aren’t taking advantage of the voluntary screenings. The project will take several years.

Prison officials have no plans now to address how staff might increase the screening rates, particularly at youth prisons.