OBJECTIVES In California, injection drug users (IDUs) comprise the second leading risk group for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and the majority of hepatitis C virus (HCV) cases. Innovative disease screening and prevention activities are needed to improve disease surveillance and to guide appropriate public health responses. This study tested the hypothesis that offering HIV couns...

In 2004, the World Health Organization performed a survey to assess transmitted drug resistance in Mexico City among drug-naive persons with newly diagnosed human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and likely to be recently infected who were attending 3 voluntary counseling and testing sites. A parallel study comparing 2 alternative methods of enrolling survey participant was conducted in 9...

HIV counseling and testing services play an important role in HIV treatment and prevention efforts in developing countries. Community-wide testing campaigns to detect HIV earlier may additionally impact community knowledge and beliefs about HIV. We conducted a cluster-randomized evaluation of a home-based HIV testing campaign in western Kenya and evaluated the effects of the campaign on communi...

BACKGROUND One-third of all new HIV infections in Cambodia are estimated to be due to mother-to-child transmission. Although the Ministry of Health adopted a policy of provider-initiated HIV testing and counseling (PITC), nearly a quarter of pregnant mothers were not tested in 2007. Greater acceptance of HIV testing is a challenge despite Cambodia's adoption of the PITC policy. METHODS A hosp...

I t is estimated that there are some 252,000–312,000 Americans living with HIV yet unaware that they carry this deadly virus [1]. Once they develop symptoms of HIV disease, most will be diagnosed. But by then, their immune systems will have experienced permanent damage, and thousands will have inadvertently infected their partners. One analysis reckons that annual HIV transmission rates in the ...

Inadequate uptake of testing for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains a primary bottleneck toward universal access to treatment and care, and is an obstacle to realizing the potential of new interventions for preventing HIV infection, including treatment for prevention and preexposure prophylaxis. HIV self-testing offers an approach to scaling up testing that could be high impact, low cos...

Purpose. Although there have been studies on the presence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) among the adult and even pediatric population, the adolescent population has been neglected. The main objective of this study was to understand and describe the profile of adolescents accessing the Integrated Counseling and Testing Centre (ICTC) at a tertiary healthcare centre in north India. This wa...

Despite the availability of antiretroviral prophylaxis, roughly one-fifth of public-sector antenatal patients decline HIV testing in Lusaka, Zambia. We administered a survey to determine individual-level predictors of HIV testing. Of 1064 antenatal attendees approached after pretest counseling, 1060 (>99%) participated. Of these, 686 (65%) agreed to HIV testing. On bivariate analysis controllin...

Proposals to make prenatal HIV testing routine and universal dramatize ethical issues regarding early detection of HIV. These proposals would abolish pretest counseling and written informed consent for prenatal HIV testing. Ethical concerns include whether pregnant women are adequately informed that they may refuse such testing and whether patients have an opportunity to obtain more detailed in...