News

Activist argues against South Africa’s mass HIV testing campaign

28 July 2010

South Africa’s campaign to test 15 million people for HIV in one year risks being implemented in a way that undermines people’s human rights, the activist Mark Heywood told the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference in Vienna. Incidents of coercive testing have been recorded but the lack of effective monitoring procedures means that it’s impossible to know whether those incidents are widespread or not.

South Africa’s testing campaign is one element of the country’s dramatic reorientation of its HIV policy. It aims to help the country to provide treatment to 80% of people in need by 2011, by encouraging take-up of voluntary testing at existing health facilities, routinely offering HIV tests at both inpatient and outpatient facilities and organising ‘testing days’ in specific districts. Health workers have been reallocated from other duties or brought out of retirement.

Heywood made it clear that he thinks the testing campaign is justifiable and necessary. As well as having the potential to reduce the number of people starting treatment at very low CD4 counts, the programme will also offer people health screening for other conditions and link people to health services they need.

Moreover, he said the programme has been an opportunity to kick start long overdue changes in the country’s health system. Stronger infrastructure and task shifting has been necessary for the campaign to be successful.

However, he has a number of concerns. “From a human rights perspective, there is no monitoring at all of what we can call adverse events,” he said. “There is no system to monitor whether a person who is diagnosed with HIV then suffers discrimination, suffers violence or gains access to treatment.”

He said that research has already shown that HIV counselling and testing is frequently poorly delivered, with breaches in the protocols of how testing should be delivered. In many cases, the poor physical infrastructure of healthcare facilities made it extremely challenging to provide a confidential service.

The testing campaign is only a means to an end, he said. Its intention is to give people access to treatment and to other healthcare services. However, if treatment is not actually provided, then the means cannot be justified, he concluded.

Read the full article at Aidsmap.

A webcast of this session is available on the website of the Kaiser Family Foundation.