The United Nations has set targets to diagnose 90% of all people with HIV by 2020 towards the goal of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030.
This was made known in a statement made available to our correspondent in New York by the world body’s media unit.
The statement indicated that currently, it is estimated that only 54% of people with HIV are aware of their infection. It added that in order to close the gap, countries are now required to rapidly increase access to and uptake of HIV testing services; particularly among populations with lowest coverage and highest risk.
According to the statement, the World Health Organization, WHO, is developing new guidance on HIV self-testing as part of the updated Consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services, which are planned for release in December 2016.
“While a formal recommendation on HIV self-testing has not yet been issued, WHO has already provided programmatic guidance and encouraged countries to start piloting and conducting demonstration projects to evaluate self-testing in their particular contexts” the statement reads in parts.
It continued that self-testing had been proposed as an innovative way to contribute to this effort, stressing that the method is viewed as particularly effective at increasing uptake of testing among people at risk or living with HIV who may not otherwise seek HIV testing.
HIV self-testing is a process in which people can collect their own specimen (saliva or blood), then perform a test and interpret the result, often in private or with someone they trust.
WHO’s existing guidance states that HIV self-testing does not provide a HIV-positive diagnosis; any reactive (positive) self-test result should be confirmed using a validated national testing algorithm by a health-care provider.
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