{"id":1225,"date":"2017-03-13T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T01:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/?p=1225"},"modified":"2017-03-13T10:20:17","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T02:20:17","slug":"giving-hiv-test-kits-to-women-is-increasing-testing-in-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/giving-hiv-test-kits-to-women-is-increasing-testing-in-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving HIV-Test Kits to Women is Increasing Testing in Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers have found that giving women HIV test kits increases testing among their male partners. The research was conducted in sub-Saharan Africa where men go for HIV testing<\/a> much less compared to women. The study was published in PLOS Medicine\u00a0<\/em>in November last year.<\/p>\n

The Study<\/h2>\n

The study was carried out between June 2015 and January 2016 by researchers from the United States and Kenya. The study involved 600 women in the category of 18-39 years who paid a visit to antenatal and postnatal clinics in Kisumu, Kenya. The purpose of the study was to find out if providing HIV self-test kits<\/a> to the target group would encourage their partners to test for HIV<\/a>.<\/p>\n

HIV Self-Test Kits Crucial in Increasing HIV Testing Rates among Men<\/h2>\n

The respondents were divided into two groups where one group was given the self-test kits and the other group was not. A follow-up of the two groups after 3 months showed that only 10% of those who were given the kits did not use them as compared to 48% of those who were not given. Additionally, the rate of couple testing was at 75% for those given the kits compared to 33% of those who did not receive the kits.<\/p>\n

Harsha Thirumurthy, a correspondent author from the University of North California said that giving women HIV self-test kits played a major and crucial role in increasing HIV testing rates among men who are otherwise hard to reach through the various community-based strategies that may have been put in place or HIV testing clinics. Thirumurthy further added that as the prices for the tests go down; the tests could be better used in countries that are highly affected by HIV<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Training women on the know-how of the self-test kits as well as providing multiple kits for their partners makes the process cost-effective and easy to carry out in the high prevalence countries, said the head of Impact Research and Development Organization based in Kisumu.<\/p>\n

Limitations of the Study<\/h2>\n

As much as the self-test kits make things a bit easy for people who want anonymity, it does have its limitations. The lack of guidance and counselling that usually happens at a STD\u00a0testing clinic <\/a>is not an available for people who carry out the self-tests.<\/p>\n

As a result, people who may get positive results may harm themselves, have low self-esteem and other feelings that may cause the person to take his\/her own life if they are not mature enough or strong enough to deal with the outcome. Moreover, the self-test does not provide 100% anonymity because the individual will have to reveal his\/her HIV status at the clinic because he\/ she would have to get treatment in the event of a positive result.<\/p>\n

HIV self-tests provide a way to get to men who will rarely go for HIV testing which may in turn help in HIV prevention<\/a>, reducing the number of new HIV infection cases among couples. However, more needs to be done to provide guidance and counselling services to people who want to take the self-tests both before and after the test to better equip them with the necessary information on how to handle the results whether, they are positive or negative.<\/p>\n

Reference:<\/strong>\u00a0PLOS Medicine, 8 November 2016<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A study has found that giving HIV self-test kits to women when they visit healthcare facilities could increase HIV testing among couples and male partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[19,224,280,153,279,151,281],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shimclinic","tag-hiv","tag-hivinfection","tag-hivselftestkits","tag-hivtesting","tag-hivtestkits","tag-study","tag-hivclinics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1352,"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions\/1352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shimclinic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}