One month to universal HIV testing plan

In just under a month, teams of healthcare workers will start a door-to-door campaign across Lesotho, offering everyone over the age of 12 an on-the-spot HIV test. The US$12.5 million 'Know Your Status' initiative is a collaborative effort between the government and the World Health Organisation (WHO), modelled on mass immunisation drives such as those for polio. According to Jim Yong Kim, former head of the AIDS directorate at WHO, the idea that no one would be offered a test without appropriate counselling, support, prevention and care options being available, whatever the individual diagnosis, was a key part of the initiative. Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper quoted Kim as saying, "The brilliance of [the initiative] is that you cannot be more aggressive or proactive about asking people to get tested unless both treatment and prevention are in place." The universal HIV testing campaign is scheduled to run until the end of 2007.