Community-based HIV-prevention efforts can boost testing, help reduce new infections

In Africa and Thailand, communities that worked together on HIV-prevention efforts saw not only a rise in HIV screening but a drop in new infections, according to a new study presented this week at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.   The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health's Project Accept — a trial conducted by the HIV Prevention Trials Network to test a combination of social, behavioral and structural HIV-prevention interventions — demonstrated that a series of community efforts was able to boost the number of people tested for HIV and resulted in a 14 percent reduction in new HIV infections, compared with control communities.   "These study results clearly demonstrate that high rates of testing can be achieved by going into communities and that this strategy can result in increased HIV detection, which makes referral to care possible," said Project Accept's overall principal investigator, Thomas J. Coates, who directs UCLA's Center for World Health and is an associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute. "This has major public health benefit implications by not only linking infected individuals to care but also by encouraging testing in entire communities and therefore also reducing further HIV transmission."   The trial was conducted in 34 communities in South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe and in 14 communities in Thailand. It consisted of mobile HIV testing, post-test...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news