HIV AIDS Infectious diseases preventive medicine and public health Public health
Knowing if you are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is relatively simple . There are several options to find out if one has acquired the status of HIV-positive: go to your health center and request to be tested for HIV, go to one of the many NGOs that make these tests available for free to anyone who is approach your facilities or, in some autonomous communities, approach the pharmacy, where you will be tested and the result will be provided.
However, starting this Saturday, it will be even easier , after the approval in the Council of Ministers of the non-prescription acquisition of HIV self-diagnostic tests, tests that allow the user to take the test at home and learn he alone of his result. All for a very affordable price and with a reliability similar to that of the other available options.
But, what does this HIV pioneer consist of? According to this newspaper explains the specialist in infectious diseases at the General University Hospital Gregorio Marañón Juan Carlos Lopez Bernaldo de Quirós, there are at least two types of devices : those that find out the presence of the virus through a drop of blood that the test extracts without discomfort of the user's finger and those who do it through saliva .
Both are for sale in several countries , as explained by the Ministry of Health, but also online . The price varies but could be around 25 euros , comments to EL ESPAÑOL Jorge Garrido, director of the NGO Positive Support and Secretary General of the State HIV / AIDS Coordinator ( CESIDA ).
Both for the NGOs and for the doctors the approval of these tests - already advanced in summer by Health - is good news . "It's a step forward," says López, who points out that there are still people who " do not dare to go to the health system " to know if they have been infected with HIV. With the methods available so far, argues this expert, there was always a time when the user had to pick up a paper where the acronym VIH was read, "even if the result was negative", something that "still stigmatizes " and that is avoided with the self-diagnosis test.
For Garrido, it is a way of "diversifying testing ", of allowing more options . "Not everyone can go to a sexually transmitted disease center or to a health center - in some they still ask for documentation - and it is a system supported by the Onusida guidelines, " he says.
The secretary of CESIDA comments that there are people "who can not be reached" with current strategies and refers above all to rural areas . For his part, Lopez points to another possible motive behind this approval: paving the way for the approval of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). "It is a totally personal opinion, but it is a way to prepare the ground for a measure that still has many people against it socially," he told this newspaper.
Without further advice
Although both congratulate themselves on the legal arrival of these self-diagnostic tests, there is an issue that worries them. Finding out that one suffers from an infection such as HIV definitely deserves specialized advice . "This would be good," says the doctor, "someone should tell the newly informed of their infection to go to their health center."
In this sense, and since the measure is not a surprise for the different NGOs, Garrido says that it is working with a pharmaceutical laboratory, Mylan - which manufactures one of the devices that could be put on sale in Spanish pharmacies and that it works by digitopuncture- so that the system includes an anonymous information telephone , "a kind of hotline ", where the patient can be informed of the following recommended steps.
It is estimated that in Spain between 18% and 20% of those infected with HIV are unaware that they are, which not only poses a danger to their own health - the longer the treatment is delayed the easier it is to reach opportunistic infections associated with AIDS - but also for the rest, since without antiretroviral treatment they transmit the virus in their risk behaviors .
However, the self-diagnostic tests have some tricks . The main one, which Garrido points out is the so-called window period , a concept that implies that one can not do the test as soon as one has a risky behavior, since the results may not be reliable. "The time to wait varies depending on the devices, but for this Mylan is about a month and a half, " says Garrido, who announces that CESIDA will make an information campaign to transmit the instructions for using the new method. diagnosis.