The National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS) is re-introducing its national days of testing for HIV/AIDS, ahead of World Aids Day, which will be observed on December 1.
This exercise commenced on Wednesday and will run until Sunday at all 62 fixed voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) sites, as well as the 17 temporary booths countrywide. The initiative, which is being held under the theme “Test and start a new life for HIV Prevention”, is to encourage the Guyanese population to go out and get tested.
However, National VCT Coordinator attached to the NAPS, Debra Success-Hall, outlined that while it is important for everyone to get tested and know their status, they will be targeting youths and young adults during this testing drive period, since the infected population has gotten younger.
She explained that the Secretariat’s programmatic data has revealed that persons between the ages of 15 to 19 and 20 to 25 are infected and are being diagnosed on a daily basis with HIV. This, she noted, calls for urgent actions to be taken.
“We need to ensure that we do something urgently to ensure that we are able to decrease that. We have our in and out of school youths, and we have to probably go back to the drawing broad and develop a new strategy to deal with these (young) people,” she stated.
On this note, Success-Hall urged the Public Health Ministry to engage the Education Ministry so that there can be dialogue on how to go about getting senior students tested. “It is disturbing what is happening (with young people) and we need to take control,” she posited.
Meanwhile, re-launching this ‘week of testing’ initiative was the brainchild of Public Health Minister, Dr George Norton, who underscored the importance of persons being tested for HIV/AIDS.
“I am inviting the general public to know their status. It’s no doubt that many a times there are persons who don’t know whether or not they are HIV positive. Gone are the days when that used to be a sort of death sentence, now it has become a chronic infection because of the possibilities (of treatments) that exist now,” he stated.
Moreover, the Minister noted that the theme of this testing drive can be aptly applied to either of two scenarios. The first being that a person tested negative will have the opportunity to adapt measures to ensure their status remains the same; while secondly, those who are tested positive will now be able to adapt a life-style that can prolong their health.
According to statistics from the National AIDS Programme Secretariat (NAPS), some 40,331 persons were tested for HIV/AIDS from January to the end of July. The statistics for the remainder of the year will be available at the end of December.
It was pointed out that given the high costs of conducting these tests, it has been found that it would be more cost effective to target groups that are in the higher risk categories such as youths.