Buy a home HIV test here

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the immune system, the body’s defense against infection. HIV is commonly transmitted during sex or intravenous (IV) drug use. There are an estimated 40 million people living in the world with HIV. Currently there is no cure, but early detection and treatment can help people live much longer. This service would be good for you if you think you are able to cope with being told the results without a specialist present. You should always consider a follow-up test at a clinic.

It is very important that you wait three and a half months after possible infection before testing for HIV. This is because any test is unlikely to pick up signs of HIV infection in the first 14 weeks of infection. For more information on HIV, please visit The Body.

Our service is totally confidential. We won't inform anyone of any details. You can buy a home Rapid Anti-HIV (1&2) Test here and we will deliver it via 1st class post. The test kits sold here are 99.8% accurate. You will know the results within 10 minutes. The tests screen and detect HIV-1 & HIV-2 antibodies in a blood sample. The presence of HIV antibodies indicates the presence of the HIV virus.

The tests have been approved by USAID. Please click here to view the USAID List of Approved HIV/AIDS Rapid Test Kits. Or alternatively, click here to download the spreadsheet from USAID. It is on line 25 of the spreadsheet.

Free home HIV Testing

February 7th, 2010

Think your immune to HIV? According to BASIC of Northwest Florida about 500 people are living with HIV in the Central Panhandle area.

Sunday is National Black HIV Awareness Day so in advance BASIC held a free testing clinic Saturday afternoon.home hiv test, home hiv kit, hiv self test

If you didn’t make it out Saturday and would like to get tested it’s not too late.

This Monday the Bay County Health Department is also offering free HIV self testing.

HIV self test/AIDS self test Awareness Days scheduled

February 7th, 2010

The St. Johns County Health Department will observe National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Days through Friday. Free testing will be given at the clinic on U.S. 1 South between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. HIV/AIDS is one of the leading causes of death for African Americans. In 2007, HIV/AIDS was the fourth leading cause of death for black men and the third leading cause of death for black women, age 25 to 44. home hiv test, home hiv kit, hiv self test. African Americans account for about 13 percent of the U.S. population and also account for about half of the people who contract HIV and are diagnosed with AIDS. This year’s theme, “Get Educated, Get Tested, Get Treated, Get Involved.” For more information, call 825-5055 extension 1123. Do you know your HIV status? If not, get tested.home hiv test, home hiv kit, hiv self test

HIV/AIDS Clinical Diagnostics’ Impressive R&D Significantly Cuts Down the Prevalence Rates of the Disease, Finds Frost & Sullivan

February 5th, 2010

Rising consumer awareness that early diagnosis and treatment can delay the progression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to anti-immuno deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has had a telling impact on the sales of HIV tests. The introduction of antiretroviral drugs has considerably delayed the onset of AIDS and the global prevalence rate has dropped by two-thirds.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Owing to this shrinking of the end-user market, test manufacturers have been looking at alternative revenue streams.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.technicalinsights.frost.com), Rapid Advances in HIV/AIDS Clinical Diagnostics, finds that technological advancements address outstanding and new issues associated with diagnosis and monitoring of HIV infections by providing simplified, cost-effective, and precise testing.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

If you are interested in a virtual brochure for this study, please send an e-mail to Sarah Saatzer, Corporate Communications, at sarah.saatzer@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company website, city, state and country.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

An area that could prove lucrative is the rapid testing kits market, where tests usually produce very quick results (between 5 and 30 minutes) and are easy to use, with no specialized instrumentation required. The HIV diagnostics and monitoring sector has gained significantly over the last three years from the widespread use of viral load monitoring intended for the follow-up testing of AIDS patients.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

While hospitals and clinics will be aided greatly by the product developments, they will be looking for technological advancements that can help them deal with the rise in infectious pathogens and antibiotic resistance.

“In an attempt to address this issue, new nano materials and nano device concepts are unified to create diagnostic assays that can operate at the point-of-care with reduced cost,” says Technical Insights Research Analyst Prasanna Vadhana Kannan. “Some of the benefits of rapid HIV diagnostics based on lab-on-a-chip systems include reduction in healthcare costs, improvement in rapid public health responses to disease outbreaks, and a drastic reduction in the usage of antibiotics.”home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

The HIV clinical diagnostics sector is on the brink of a revolution with the expected approval of HIV assays that are performed on automated immunoanalyzers. Currently, healthcare professionals have a wide gamut of tools such as viral load monitoring, cluster difference (CD) 4/CD8 counts, and HIV genotyping that enable them to make a more accurate prognosis and prescribe better therapeutic regimens.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Despite the availability of sophisticated virological and immunologic techniques, there is plenty of room for novel diagnostics. They can support disease management by minimizing drug failures and ensuring the effectiveness of a therapeutic.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

“Such advancement of new diagnostics can help drug manufacturers to identify the most promising product that will offer clinically meaningful efficacy end points and help choose the right target population for clinical trials,” notes Kannan.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

The considerable progress made by HIV/AIDS clinical diagnostics had compelled the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review the usage terms of home testing systems. It had to consider the availability of these home-based treatments for people with HIV and the public health benefits that will accrue from more people being aware of their HIV status.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

The practice of home testing is likely to gain popularity all over the world, as it provides an opportunity for healthcare providers to identify more people with HIV. This will help in controlling the spread of HIV infection and AIDS.

“Patients may take an impulsive decision to get tested, but this desire often passes quickly, when they realize testing is a tedious process,” observes Kannan. “With the recent approval of many products in the United States, HIV testing kits should be easily available and the population should be made aware of this.”home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Rapid Advances in HIV/AIDS Clinical Diagnostics, a part of the Technical Insights subscription, provides an overview of newly evolving technologies that are becoming popular because they can address issues of cost, limited infrastructure, and lack of formally trained personnel. It evaluates the key concerns and trends that could influence the future of the global HIV diagnostics and monitoring markets.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit In this research, Frost & Sullivan’s expert analysts thoroughly examine the following technologies: sequencing system, antibody testing tools, nanoscale cantilevers, microfluidic channels, and oral fluid HIV testing kits. Further, this research service includes detailed technology analysis and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market.

Home HIV Test. Is It Ever O.K. to Name Rape Victims?

February 5th, 2010

Some readers have asked, in the context of my recent Congo columns, why I have named rape victims, including the name of a 9-year-old girl. Let me say at the outset that it’s the policy of the Times not to name rape victims and that making exceptions requires consultation with a senior editor. That’s a policy that makes sense to me; I didn’t consult but should have (and will in the future). In any case, let me explain my thinking here.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

On the one hand, it’s impossible to get rape on the agenda when the victims are anonymous. Human beings just aren’t hard-wired to feel compassion for classes of victims, but for individuals. In my book and elsewhere, I’ve written about the research in social psychology and neurology that underscores that the only effective way to get people to care about a problem is to tell a story about an individual.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit For those interested in getting traction for humanitarian issues, I strongly recommend the work in this field, by Professor Paul Slovicand others. So one challenge is that if we leave out names and faces, then there’s no outrage, and the rapes go on and on. We’ve seen that in Darfur and elsewhere.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

On the other hand, rape victims are already often pariahs, and putting a name or face in print or on the web could make the stigmatization eternal. Where’s the humanitarianism in trying to prevent future rapes if the method risks causing anguish, isolation and life-long stigma to particular rape survivors? home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kitAnd in the case of my reporting about rapes in Sudan, anyone I wrote about was also at risk of being prosecuted for fornication (if unmarried) or adultery (if married) for confessing to sexual contact without having four adult male Muslim eyewitnesses to prove that it was rape.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

I agonized over these tradeoffs in Darfur in particular. My own compromise, which shaped my thinking more recently in Congo as well, involves a kind of balancing test. A starting point is obviously consent of the woman (and a guardian if she is a minor). home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kitGranted, it’s hard to ensure that the consent is meaningful in a village where the woman has never seen the Internet and doesn’t really understand what the New York Times is. But I try to explain a bit, and if we shoot a video we show what it will look like. In Congo, women listen to the radio, and so that’s their connection to the mass media, their way of understanding to some degree what I do and the way it can reach a wide audience.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

The second step is to include the kind of details that give granularity without getting the person in trouble. For example, in Darfur, I often included the woman’s name and age, but that wasn’t useful information for the authorities: many people share identical names, and birthdates and ages tend to be fluid. I would never give home village or husband or father’s full name, or a location within a camp, because that might enable someone to be tracked down.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit I filmed against a plain backdrop so that the location couldn’t be determined. That approach seemed to work: Nobody ever got in trouble either with the authorities or with her own community for sharing her story with me, and I think the stories did lead to fewer rapes and more help for rape survivors. I’ve gone back and seen some of the women again, and they were mostly proud of having spoken up. One told me: This is how I fight genocide.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

In Congo, likewise, I didn’t include the home town of the women involved. My decision to use names also reflected the isolation of the areas involved. In last Sunday’s column, for example, the dateline was Kalehe, the nearest “city,” but the individuals I wrote about live a five-hour hike from Kalehe. home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kitNobody in the area ever sees any newspaper or the Internet. Indeed, many had never heard of President Obama, and some of those who had heard of him didn’t know if he is black or white. The people there speak no English and minimal French. In short, it seems to me that there’s zero chance that the column or video is going to reach these communities in which these women live or haunt them in any way. (They realized that, and it’s one reason why they were so forthcoming.)home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

This issue reflects a broader tension between journalists, whose instinct is to publish, and aid workers engaged in protection issues, whose instinct is to shield individuals. My own take is that journalists are sometimes too quick to publish, and aid workers sometimes too quick to protect individuals. The best example of that may be AIDS testing. home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit. Humanitarians opposed any kind of mandatory HIV testing and were very suspicious of voluntary testing without enormous safeguards, because there were real risks that a woman who tested positive might be kicked out of her home and left to starve on the street. That concern was warranted — but it also led to delays so that AIDS spread more widely than it otherwise would have. (You can’t fight AIDS when no one knows who has it.) home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kitHundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, probably ended up with AIDS because of the humanitarian protections put in place around testing, and to me that wasn’t worth the tradeoff and was one of the big failures in AIDS strategy in southern Africa. Lots of others disagree.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

My larger point, though, is simply that these are messy, difficult issues, sometimes with real tradeoffs between the individual interest and the community interest. I identified the Congo rape victims by name because I had permission and because I was completely confident that they wouldn’t get in trouble, and because I think that’s the only way to raise the issue on the agenda and stop this kind of sexual predation. home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kitBut plenty of people will disagree, and in any case I’ll be consulting with editors on these identification questions in the future. I also welcome your thoughts on this topic, particularly from aid workers, assault survivors and journalists.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Scientists fear HIV drug resistance may rise home hiv kit

January 31st, 2010

Bangalore: The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, infection is draining the global public health systems, has infected 2.7 million people and caused two million deaths in 2008, but things could get even worse, warn scientists—the emergence of a wave of drug-resistant strains of the virus could hinder efforts to control the pandemic.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Using a complex network model that takes into account single-, double-, and triple-resistant strains of the virus, a team of US researchers report in Friday’s Science that there’s a threat to global public health from strains of HIV that are resistant to traditional antiretroviral treatments.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

This model, they say, can be used to predict drug resistance in any place where individuals are being treated with antiretrovirals (ARVs) for HIV infection, including India, where even the second line of ARVs are now part of the national AIDS control programme.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

This is a very “novel” study that discusses dynamics of transmission of the drug-resistant HIV strains based on the data collected in San Francisco among men having sex with men, says Ramesh Paranjape, director of the National AIDS Research Institute in Pune.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

While using HIV prevalence and resistance data from San Francisco, the model accurately reproduced the documented evolution of transmitted resistance in the city over the past two decades. It showed, surprisingly, that many of the drug-resistant strains which have evolved over the past 10 years in San Francisco are much more transmissible than has been previously thought.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

The research also reveals that while effective treatment has kept the transmission of resistant HIV under 15% in San Francisco, a full 60% of the resistant HIV strains in the city are capable of causing self-sustaining epidemics.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Recalibration of the model for a new region would require prevalence and treatment data such as the type and duration of the drugs being used, their effectiveness in suppressing viral load and reducing mortality, rates of drug resistance, and the fraction of people needing the drug who actually take it.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Bit less of the Jab Jab – home hiv test kit

January 31st, 2010

Did you hear the story about the “Mermaid” and the dude with a rash on his penis?
OK, come closer and I will tell you how weak we South Africans are.

A couple of months ago some of us were asked to take part in Celebrity Survivor South Africa.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Being somebody who likes things I agreed with pleasure and went with other personalities to do all sorts of tests, from psychometric, psychological tests, a fitness and full medical exam, which included a pregnancy and HIV test.

All the results were great, except for the fact that I have a heart condition and would have required a cardiologist on the island in case I fell on a thorn and had a heart attack.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

I know all you haters wish I had gone but hold on – this story has an ending you have to get to.

So, with advice from their doctor I decided a cardiologist was a tad dramatic and stayed at home with my babies.

Of course their doctor said I should be OK as long as I stay calm but I insisted that missing sleeping on sand during a storm would be OK.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

That was the first cowardly act.

“Black folk want the easy life,” says you know who while her one domestic lifts up her feet and the second one vacuums the carpet under her.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

“Black folk never want to spend time in the great outdoors and if they do we call them coconuts.

“Our concept of leisure is mostly sitting at restaurants sipping alcoholic beverages while whites hike, run randomly in their yards or even climb mountains to see better views.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

“God only knows why.”

Yes, I admit I was a coward and would make the same decision again as I am not geared for cooking food.

Imagine having to find it as well!home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Then you had the model Christina Storm who cried and went home early in the show because she claimed she was not a mermaid and did not see the need to be jumping off a cliff into the sea.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Second sign of a coward – what did she think Survivor entailed?

Walking up and down a ramp?

But, then again, I guess after living with James Small every minute away from him should be spent smiling and thinking happy thoughts.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

Then you had musician Jub Jub who demanded to leave because he claimed to have a rash on his penis.

He must have repeated this so much I was scared my neighbours would think I was watching porn.

I never did find out what caused the rash but because I’m a huge hypochondriac I consulted Family Doctor Home Adviser on the web.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit

It had a lot of penis information – lumps, swelling, painful erection, hard skin-coloured lumps or warts, blood in semen, swelling of its tip, pain of the tip but nothing under rash on penis.home hiv test, hiv self test, home hiv kit