Say No To At Home HIV Test

Have you all heard about the FDA being in the process of approving a new at home HIV test? I think this is a bad move and that the concerns outweigh the potential good of it. First of all, persons who take an HIV test in a clinic or testing facility get extensive counseling and support prior to taking the test. Often times people have a number of questions about how HIV is spread and about specific behaviors they might be engaged in that are risky for contracting HIV etc. If a person is taking the test at home, they won't be able to ask these questions or get the answers.

Another issue is the accuracy of this at home HIV test. Currently there are very detailed procedures that clinics go through to ensure that the rapid HIV tests they have are not corrupted and are in good standing. They have to run controls every week to make sure the tests are still valid. What are the storage procedures for these at home tests? I certainly hope they aren't as sensitive as the test's the clinics use as there could be lots of inaccurate test results. Also with any rapid test, even the ones done in clinics, there is a chance of testing a false positive. This means that a person might test positive on a rapid test, which looks for antibodies to HIV, not the actual virus itself. There are rare occasions where people test positive on the antibody test, but when the confirmatory test is done that looks for the actual virus, the person actually tests negative. God forbid someone get a positive result from an at home HIV test and never go to an actual clinic or medical doctor to confirm the result! What if this person decides to kill themselves because they can't face the possibility of living with HIV? At least when a person tests positive in a clinic or doctor's setting, the counselor can gauge their reaction to the positive test result and provide them with support, a mental health referral or immediate psychiatric support. Some people find that an HIV diagnosis isn't the death sentence they thought it was once they overcome the initial shock of the result and learn of the resources to keep them healthy.

Another issue is the impact at home testing would have on HIV/AIDS surveillance. When a person is tested at a medical facility or HIV clinic, all positive cases are reported to the state so that the epidemic tracked to see what demographics of people need to be targeted for increased education and prevention services. At home testing can have a detrimental impact on recording accurate data of HIV-positive persons in the US.

As you can tell, I'm not in favor of at home HIV testing. Is this another act by the government to decrease funding for HIV related Community Based Organizations (CBO's)? If people no longer need to go to CBO's to test, then the government can cut this kind of funding from their budgets and save money. Far fetched? Maybe not! There are lots of drawbacks and potential dangers to it. If this new at home rapid HIV test is approved and put into use, I hope that people still choose to get a FREE test at a medical facility or community health clinic where people who are trained to do this work can help you.

What are your thoughts on having a rapid at home HIV test available to the public?

Lee