Love Yourself and QCHD conduct free HIV counseling and testing

Volunteer HIV educators and counselors take a break
after a long day of work on Dec. 11, 2011. [Photo by: Ura Sevilla]

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT individuals, after learning about it through social networking sites, blogs, and Facebook, voluntarily came to a special HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT) event organized by the Love Yourself (VINN Advocacy) Group on December 11, 2011. The event was held in a private facility in West Avenue, Quezon City, in partnership with the Quezon City Health Department (QCHD).

The program provided an intensive STI and HIV/AIDS education session to all attendees. For those who signed the informed consent for testing, the mandated pre-test and post-test counseling were also done. A total of twenty-six (26) volunteer HIV counselors (trained and certified by the Department of Health), and HIV educators (trained by certified trainers of the Philippine National AIDS Council) helped in ensuring that the education and counseling were done according to set protocol.

The 108 HIV Ab test clients’ age ranged from 18 to 46 years. Out of the 108 clients, 99 were male and  9 were female.

As per DOH protocol, during the post-test counseling and release of the rapid HIV test result, all clients were given instructions, as follows:

The blood samples of the clients that turned out reactive shall be sent to the National Reference Laboratory-STD AIDS Cooperative Central Laboratory / San Lazaro Hospital to undergo the confirmatory test. The QCHD will contact the client after two weeks and the results will be given. If confirmed positive, the client will undergo further laboratory tests, most importantly the CD4 level to determine the need for administration of anti-retroviral drugs. For all others that received non-reactive results for the test, they were reminded to consistently use the recommended HIV prevention practices, and take the voluntary HCT again after three to six months.