WHO calls for massive expansion in HIV testing

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON (Reuters) - Voluntary HIV tests should be offered to all patients attending clinics, for whatever reason, in countries where AIDS is widespread, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, testing is recommended for all patients attending selected facilities, such as antenatal or sexual health clinics.

Issuing new guidance to governments, the global body said a major expansion in testing was essential if the world was to beat the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has killed more than 25 million people in the past quarter of a century.

The AIDS virus today infects around 40 million worldwide, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where just 12 percent of men and 10 percent of women know their HIV status.

"This is radical in the sense that things have to change," WHO HIV/AIDS director Kevin De Cock told Reuters.

"Across the world, people with HIV are flowing through healthcare settings, not being diagnosed and not being offered the advantages of knowing their status."

Drugs can hold HIV at bay and keep patients alive, but unless people know they are infected they will not seek treatment. They are also more likely to infect others.

The WHO says less than 20 percent of HIV-positive people in low and middle-income countries know they are infected.