The west-coast province of British Columbia announced this week that it will become the first jurisdiction in the country to provide encourage all residents to get free HIV testing.
The major city of Vancouver had been providing a four-year testing programme but when it was found that dozens of people who were HIV positive who did not fit into any of the typical risk profiles.
With this news the provincial government decided to expand the programme and make it available to all residents in the province..
BC Health Minister Terry Lake says, “There are an estimated 12,000 British Columbians living with HIV, and many of them, estimated to be up to 3,500, do not know that they have this infection”. He said making province-wide testing available will help remove the stigma of HIV/AIDS and identify those living with the disease who may not know they have it so they can get earlier treatment.
Dr. Julio Montaner, the director at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS , says ” What at one time was perceived as a crazy idea — normalizing HIV testing — today becomes a reality for all British Columbians. B.C. continues to be the model that the United Nations AIDS program is using to show the world how HIV and AIDS can be actually controlled and brought to its knees.”
Until this week, only pregnant women were routinely offered HIV testing which Health Minister Lake says has virtually eliminated transmission from mother to child.
The new guidelines recommend health-care providers offer HIV tests every five years to patients aged 18 to 70 years, tests every year for those who belong to high-risk HIV populations and testing once to patients aged 70 years or older.
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