LUSAKA, Zambia, Jan. 24, 2008 – The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) sponsored the International HIV Counseling and Testing (CT) Workshop here that brought together 177 participants from 27 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Caribbean. The meeting was supported by PSI, Family Health International and the PEPFAR CT Technical Working Group.
The workshop included over 50 technical presentations, five working group sessions and 10 CT sites in Lusaka.
With a vision that everyone around the world has the right to know their HIV status and to receive appropriate prevention and care services, presenters were carefully selected for their expertise in designing and implementing effective CT programs. Delegates included CT experts and researchers, Ministry of Health officials, implementing NGOs, and donor representatives. As Dvora Joseph, Director of AIDSMARK and the organizing force behind the workshop, noted, “The conference was a forum, not to only talk about the great work we all do, but to openly discuss the challenges we each face and to create innovative solutions.”
Although the number of people accessing HIV counseling and testing services has quadrupled in the past five years, recent surveys in sub-Saharan Africa showed on average just 12% of men and 10% of women have been tested for HIV and received their test results. In fact, most people living with HIV are unaware of their serostatus. Twenty-five years into the HIV epidemic, over 80% of people living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries do not know that they are HIV-positive.
