Free Aids testing in townships
2005-06-10 09:46
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Durban - The blue tents with the sunshine posters are starting to become a familiar sight in townships near South Africa's major cities, inviting locals to come in for free HIV testing and counselling.
With studies showing less than 20% of South Africans know their HIV status, a new programme is providing free, anonymous testing in poor areas on the outskirts of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.
"We are trying to appeal to the population which does not go to the health centres because they are not sick, even though they have been at risk and need to know their status," said Miriam Mhavo, programme director for the New Start voluntary testing and counselling service.
New Start kicked off in February, travelling to "very low-income areas", said Mhavo in an interview on the sidelines of the national Aids conference being held in Durban this week.
The programme funded by the South African health department, the United States (US) Centres for Disease Control and the non-governmental Society for Family Health.
The tents are linked to sites set up in the three cities that encourage South Africans to undergo HIV testing without having to brave the long waiting queues of clinics and hospitals.
Encouraging men to find out their status
The new testing programme is trying to convince men, who studies show are less inclined to go for testing, to come to the tents, running advertisements that show a healthy-looking South African male giving the thumbs-up to HIV testing.
But Mhavo said the effort had thus far had mixed results.
In the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province where the HIV/Aids prevalence rate is higher than the national average of 21.5%, about 60% of the clients who have come into the tents and testing sites are women.
"Some say Zulu women take to new concepts, new ideas much faster and are less conservative than men," said Mhavo. "We have no research-based reasons as to why we are seeing more women than men."
Of the 3 326 people who have been tested under New Start, 21% were infected with HIV, according to Mahvo.
"Most people who tested positive did not think they were at risk," said Mahvo, who brought her tents to the Aids conference to provide delegates with free testing. "That is worrisome."
United Nations (UN) Aids estimates 5.3 million people, or one in five adults, are living with HIV and Aids in South Africa, one of the highest caseloads in the world.
Other than being accessible, the testing programme also guarantees confidentiality. Clients are not required to give their names and are assigned a code number before they begin a 20- to 45-minute counselling session to prepare them for the result of the HIV test.
"We put a lot of emphasis on the pre-test session," said Mahvo because clients are either so shocked or so relieved from the result that in both cases, they stop listening to the advice.
- AFP