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BY JULIO P. YAP JR.
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THE World Health Organization or WHO has released new guidelines on HIV self-testing to improve access to and uptake of HIV diagnosis.
According to a new WHO progress report, lack of an HIV diagnosis is a major obstacle to implementing the organizationās recommendation that everyone with HIV should be offered antiretroviral therapy (ART).
The report reveals that more than 18 million people with HIV are currently taking ART, and a similar number is still unable to access treatment, the majority of which are unaware of their HIV positive status.
Today, 40 percent of all people with HIV (over 14 million) remain unaware of their status.
Many of these are people at higher risk of HIV infection who often find it difficult to access existing testing services.
HIV self-testing means people can use oral fluid or blood- finger-pricks to discover their status in a private and convenient setting.
Results are ready within 20 minutes or less. Those with positive results are advised to seek confirmatory tests at health clinics.
WHO recommends they receive information and links to counseling as well as rapid referral to prevention, treatment and care services.
HIV self-testing is a way to reach more people with undiagnosed HIV and represents a step forward to empower individuals, diagnose people earlier before they become sick, bring services closer to where people live, and create demand for HIV testing.
This is particularly important for those people facing barriers to accessing existing services.
Between 2005 and 2015, the proportion of people with HIV learning of their status increased from 12 percent to 60 percent globally.
This increase in HIV testing uptake worldwide has led to more than 80 percent of all people diagnosed with HIV receiving ART.
HIV testing coverage remains low among various population groups.
Men account for only 30 percent of people who have tested for HIV. As a result, men with HIV are less likely to be diagnosed and put on antiretroviral treatment and are more likely to die of HIV-related causes than women.
But some women miss out too. Adolescent girls and young women in East and Southern Africa experience infection rates up to eight times higher than among their male peers.
Testing also remains low among ākey populationsā and their partners ā particularly men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people, people who inject drugs, and people in prisons ā who comprise approximately 44 percent of the 1.9 million new adult HIV infections that occur each year.
Up to 70 percent of partners of people with HIV are also HIV positive. Many of those partners are not currently getting tested.
The WHO guidelines recommend ways to help HIV positive people notify their partners about their status, and encourage them to get tested.
Self-testing has been shown to nearly double the frequency of HIV testing among men who have sex with men, and recent studies in Kenya found that male partners of pregnant women had twice the uptake of HIV testing when offered self-testing compared with standard testing./PN
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