The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday started promoting quick home tests to detect HIV to allow more people to be aware of their status.
The CDC is promoting the “OraQuick HIV Self-Test,” which allows people to test for HIV-1 and HIV-2 antibodies with an oral swab in just 20 minutes in the privacy of their own homes, with the chance of prizes and free testing with each kit purchased.
The NT$200 kits can be purchased at 362 locations, including pharmacies and saunas, as well as from 26 vending machines nationwide, the CDC said, adding that online ordering with pickup at convenience stores would be available from May 12.
Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control
The promotion provides users an electronic coupon for another test kit to be issued free of charge when they register their initial results online, the agency said in a statement.
After registering their results, users are automatically entered into a raffle with about 240 prizes, including up to NT$10,000 in convenience store vouchers, it said.
The electronic vouchers and prizes are part of an initiative aimed at getting more people to receive testing for HIV and to continue testing, CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said.
“We hope to get 70,000 people to test themselves at home this year,” Lo said. “Our real goal this year is to get the people who take the test to keep repeating it.”
A similar program last year recorded more than 50,000 people testing at home, with 0.7 percent receiving a positive result, the CDC said.
The self-test program was inspired by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, which has a “90-90-90” target — 90 percent of all people living with HIV will know their status, 90 percent of all people diagnosed with HIV will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90 percent of all those receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression.
In Taiwan, only an estimated 88 percent of people with HIV are aware of their status, with 92 percent receiving antiretroviral therapy and 95 percent of those achieving viral suppression, CDC data for last year showed.
The CDC urged people who have had sex to test for HIV at least once in their lives and recommended that those who have sex without condoms be tested at least once per year.
There were 39,996 reported cases of HIV in Taiwan from 1984 until the end of March, CDC data showed.
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