The issue of early testing of HIV is not only important here in Malawi, but everywhere. The NY City Department of Health is starting a push to expand HIV testing in the Bronx.

According to a new policy analysis led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of California, Berkeley, the most common HIV prevention strategies—condom promotion, HIV testing, treatment of other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), vaccine and microbicide research, and abstinence—are having a limited impact on the predominantly heterosexual epidemics found in Africa.

Researchers at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University have created the first educational video for patients to explain rapid tests for HIV, a relatively new tool in the fight against the AIDS epidemic.

One-fourth of individuals at high risk for contracting HIV report planning to be tested for the virus in the next year, but fewer appear to follow through on that intention than individuals who are at lower risk, according to a report in the October 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Since 2000, the rates of HIV testing have remained relatively low and constant in the United States, with about one third of Americans ever having had an HIV test, and less than a quarter of the people considered at high risk for contracting the virus that causes AIDS report having been tested in the past year.

A new study concludes that routine testing for HIV recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) may violate many state laws. The study, published on October 10 in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE), found that more than thirty states require specific consent before HIV testing may occur. Nearly half of them require that consent to be in writing.

New York's law requiring HIV name-based reporting and partner notification has not dampened individuals' willingness to be tested for the disease, according to a study by the State Health Department's AIDS Institute.

Few older women were interested in being tested for the virus that causes AIDS despite having significant risk factors for lifetime exposure, according to a study published in the July/August edition of the Journal of Women’s Health. The risk is especially great among African-American women, who represent 73 percent of new HIV cases in women over age 50.

Nearly half of all people infected with HIV/AIDS are now women, the majority of whom contracted the disease through sexual intercourse with male partners. Especially alarming is the steady increase in HIV rates among women under the age of 25, a population considered one of today’s most vulnerable for acquiring the disease.

A targeted campaign of testing and counseling aimed at those who are at high risk for HIV would be more effective than the mass patient screening proposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to an analysis by David Holtgrave, PhD, an expert on HIV prevention at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently advised health professionals to offer every patient aged 13-64 years "opt-out" HIV testing (i.e. testing without the need for risk assessment and counseling).

Using the new and highly publicized CDC guidelines for HIV screening, a university-based Emergency Department implemented opt-out screening in Washington, DC, where HIV infection rates are known to be high. Fully 60% of the patients agreed to the testing, a high percentage that may have been influenced by an ongoing district-wide campaign encouraging HIV screening.