Published 21 November 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2680
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2680

News

International protocols are needed to boost public confidence in universal HIV testing

Peter Moszynski

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Fewer than 75 000 people in Lesotho were screened for HIV out of a target of 1.3 million, a study of the country’s universal HIV counselling and testing campaign has found. It concludes that for people to come forward for testing, international guidelines are needed to create sufficient confidence that rights will be respected.

Lesotho’s Know Your Status campaign aimed to test all citizens aged 12 or older and ran from 2005 until December 2007. Yet the drive fell far short of its goals, "both in carrying out the programme and in safeguarding the rights of those tested," according to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa.

Describing Lesotho’s pioneering programme as "noble in ambition but weak in action," the study concludes that it was "underfunded, incomplete, and ineffective."

Joseph Amon, director of the HIV/AIDS and human rights programme at Human . . . [Full text of this article]


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