About one in 10 of the more than 7 million people living with HIV in South Africa are not aware that they have the virus. One way to ensure that more people are diagnosed quicker is to make HIV self-testing kits more widely available – particularly to people who may not otherwise opt to have an HIV test done at a facility.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines HIV self-testing as the process whereby an individual collects their own specimen (blood or oral fluid), performs HIV testing using an HIV rapid diagnostic test and interprets the result themselves, either assisted or unassisted.
According to professor Francois Venter, deputy executive director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, and director of Ezintsha – a group of South African academics and health professionals – each test is packaged with a set of easy-to-use instructions which dictate the step-by-step process that needs to be followed to obtain an accurate result.
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South Africa has one of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the world, including for gonorrhoea. It is estimated that every year around two million people in the country get infected with the gonorrhoeae bacterium, which is likely to be an underestimate because most women don’t show any symptoms, according to a study published in the journal
PLOS ONE in 2018.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that, globally, there are 87 million cases of gonorrhoea annually, with the African region having the highest burden.
“If you look at the global number, South Africa represents about 2% of the cases which is quite high and could be an underestimate for a number of reasons including under-reporting and that women especially don’t show symptoms,” says Edward Mukwaya, who is the local clinical trial manager for a new antibiotic study being run, and fully funded by, the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP).
South Africa has one of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the world, including for gonorrhoea. It is estimated that every year around two million people in the country get infected with the gonorrhoea bacterium, which is likely to be an underestimate because most women don’t show any symptoms, according to a study published in the journal
PLOS ONE in 2018.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that, globally, there are 87 million cases of gonorrhoea annually, with the African region having the highest burden.
“If you look at the global number, South Africa represents about 2% of the cases which is quite high and could be an underestimate for a number of reasons including under reporting and that women especially don’t show symptoms,” says Edward Mukwaya, who is the local clinical trial manager for a new antibiotic study being run, and fully funded by, the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP).
In February last year, the national department of health said that it aimed to make a pill to prevent HIV infection available at all community health centres and primary healthcare clinics in South Africa by the end of September 2020.
With only 36% of public healthcare facilities providing the pills by January 2021, government has fallen short of this ambitious target. While government places most of the blame for this on the catastrophic impact of Covid-19, experts suggest there is more to it than just the pandemic.
Currently in South Africa, which is home to the biggest HIV epidemic in the world, HIV prevention efforts include four main interventions – condoms, prevention pills, voluntary medical male circumcision, and access to antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV (people living with HIV are non-infectious as long as ARVs (anti-retrovirals) successfully suppresses the virus in their bodies).
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