New Statement on HIV Testing by WHO and UNAIDS

New statement on HIV testing services was released by WHO and UNAIDS. The main aspects of the new statement are guarantee of human rights and access to the HIV tests. According to the statement HIV testing should respect patient’s choice and suit to all ethical and human rights principles.

In the statement it is also stated that HIV tests should be modern and should suit to the WHO quality standards or other equivalent national or regional quality standards, these measures are needed to avoid false-positive HIV test results. WHO and UNAIDS notes that local medical facilities and specialists should pay special attention to the procedures confirming HIV-positive test results. No patient should be diagnosed with HIV after one test, there always should be the second one before starting antiretroviral therapy.  

“Scaling up access to HIV testing is critical to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030, offering everyone the right to know their HIV status through high-quality national HIV testing programmes that respect every individual’s dignity and human rights” - said Michel Sidibe, executive director.

The 2017 UNAIDS report Ending AIDS says: progress towards the 90–90–90 targets estimates that only 70% of people living with HIV are aware of their HIV status. This is the first of the 90–90–90 targets, whereby, by 2020, 90% of people living with HIV know their status, 90% of people living with HIV who know their status are receiving antiretroviral treatment and 90% of people on treatment have suppressed viral loads.