Test yourself for HIV

South Africans, no matter how uneducated, can test themselves for HIV and get an accurate result.

This is the conclusion of researchers from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Harvard-linked Ragon Institute. They conducted a study on whether a group of men and women with a low education level could understand the instructions for an HIV home test.

Ragon Institute researcher Dr Krista Dong said the idea of a self-testing kit was inspired by kwaito star Zola, real name Bonginkosi Dlamini. The institute had approached him to use a concert to promote HIV testing.

Zola's response, said Dong, was that no one who came to listen to music wanted to find out they were HIV-positive there and then.

What South Africa needed, Zola said, was an HIV self-test.

The idea stuck with Dong, who is based at Edendale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg.

"Why if a woman is able to walk into a shop and buy a pregnancy test, which she can use at home, can people not do the same for HIV?" she wondered

She and her team at the Iteach Institute developed a home-testing kit that uses a simple finger-prick test. The kit is cheaper and more sensitive than saliva tests. It also uses simple illustrations to describe its application.

The researchers found that of the 233 people who used the kit, 231 got accurate results.

Dong said: "So now we know [that] South Africans can do this, irrespective of whether they have minimal education, [or] come from a township or a rural community."

Two of the participants had no schooling whatsoever and 146 had not finished high school. None of them had a degree.

Only one person was fluent in English, two people did not get a correct result and about a third used a helpline to assist them in doing the test.

Activists say self-testing will help people learn their status earlier and get treatment quickly.

It will also keep people from crowding into hospitals for HIV tests. Two-thirds of people in South Africa test negative.

Though a saliva-based self-testing kit has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, its sale is illegal in South African pharmacies.

In December, the SA Pharmacy Council proposed removing the clause from the Pharmacy Code of Good Practice that prevents its members selling test kits, but this is yet to happen.

The HIV Clinicians' Society supports the self-testing kits and was considering putting pressure on the council to speed up the legal process, in the "public interest".