The Change Mariner

Brazil launches free nation-wide HIV testing

Channel News Asia

Brazil has launched a free HIV testing campaign in a nation-wide effort to save the hundreds of thousands of people who are not aware that they have been infected.

Free tests will be done in public hospitals and the programme aims to conduct 3.6 million tests by the end of 2004.

The country's Health Minister says he hopes this will better inform people who are unaware that they have the the AIDS-causing virus, who may be unwittingly spreading the disease.

He believes that out of an estimated 600,000 Brazilians with AIDS, 400,000 are ignorant of their condition.

Brazil will also launch a massive advertising campaign for the tests this weekend.

Posters, stickers and media ads will be targeted towards high-risk groups like prostitutes, pregnant women and married women, and to parents worried about their children.

Now the worrying trend in the South American nation is that there is an obvious shift in the demographic of the AIDS patients.

While men constituted the majority of the patients in the past, poor women between the ages of 13 and 29 are most at risk.

According to the World Health Organization, Brazil has a model anti-AIDS programme

Posted by Norm M. Wada at October 31, 2003 12:29 AM | TrackBack
Related Categories: Area - Infectious Disease