Satellite Session - Invitation to ASAP and APN+ Members and Friends
ASAP and APN+ Joint Session: "Is Opt-Out HIV Testing In?"
Date, Time & Place: 21 August 2007 at 1pm to 2pm at BCIS Auditorium at BMICH
Speakers
* Mr Anand Grover (Lawyers Collective - HIV/AIDS)
* Professor Elizabeth Dax (Executive Committee Member of ASAP)
* Ibu Nafsiah Mboi (Secretary, Indonesian NAC)
* Ms Naoko (APN+ Current Co-Chair)
* Ms Kathleen Casey (Senior Technical Officer, Testing and Counselling, FHI)
Co-Chairs: Shiba Phurailatpam (Co-Chair, APN+) and Dr Tasnim Azim (Vice President, ASAP)
Synopsis: The question of HIV testing has again become an issue following the introduction of the recently WHO
endorsed practice of Provider Initiated Testing and Counselling (PITC). UNAIDS and UNICEF have also embraced this
approach following years of successfully applying the widely accepted principles of Voluntary & Confidential Counselling
and Testing (VCCT). PITC shifts the focus of management of testing away from the client and back to the health care
professional and seeks to place HIV testing within a package of care health tests. At the same time, rapid testing is also
becoming popular in resource poor settings leading to the possibility of many more people being tested for HIV in
relatively small periods of time. This session will focus on these three forms of testing: PITC, rapid and VCCT, and ask
whether the move away from VCCT is propagating health care environments that in fact diminish the health care rights of
clients. By embracing PITC and rapid testing approaches without adequately addressing their socio-economic and
political impact, are health care settings inadvertently creating opportunities for, directly or otherwise, the establishment
of discriminatory practices that promote stigma, diminish choice and confidentiality?
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