So you want an HIV test?
It is several years since the Grim Reaper was beamed into our homes to terrify us with the prospect of pestilence, plague and death. A potential pox on all our houses if we were not all very, very careful!
In developed countries HIV is no longer the automatic death sentence it was even a decade or so ago. Ever improving treatments can generally prevent the virus from causing too much damage to the body’s immune system. This means that HIV will not always progress to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). These drugs do not cure the infection but most people diagnosed with HIV in countries where they have access to treatments will probably live a near normal life span.
This is at a cost of about $1000 per month per patient (covered in Australia by Medicare). In poorer countries where the health budget may only be a few dollars per head per year this is unaffordable. In some developing countries as many as 25% of the population are HIV positive and most will go untreated.
We are fortunate in Australia that the danger of widespread infection with HIV has not become a reality. Education and advertising campaigns about safe sex practice and condom use have helped reduce the spread HIV along with Australia’s needle and syringe programs. Countries such as the United States that refused or delayed the provision of clean needles to injecting drug users have seen large numbers of injecting drug users become HIV positive. From there the infection can spread rapidly to sexual contacts of users, customers of the sex industry and the wider heterosexual community. Use of injected drugs is a significant health problem for the user but supply of clean equipment has a wider public health benefit and must be maintained.
In Australia HIV is generally confined to these high risk groups: men who have sex with other men and injecting drug users (and their sexual partners) however people having sex with partners (male or female) from overseas countries with high rates of HIV are also at risk. Countries with high rates of HIV are those on the American continent, in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific. Recent reports of rapidly rising rates of infection in our near neighbours Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, India and China are a concern. Travellers beware!
So, to return to the request for an HIV test: This is not always black and white. The HIV test looks for antibodies in the blood. It may take weeks (up to 13) for enough antibody to be present to make a test clearly positive so if someone caught HIV two weeks ago the virus would be in the blood but there may not be enough antibody and the test would be negative: a “false negative”. This is why people are often asked to come back later for an HIV test. If the antibody test is positive the doctor needs to do other tests to confirm that the test is truly positive. These tests take a few days, so a result might take one to two weeks to come back. Doctors have the option to use a code when ordering HIV tests to protect patients’ privacy.
Remember HIV is only one of several sexually transmissible infections. Some, like Chlamydia, are much more common than HIV so it is likely your doctor will recommend other tests if you are at risk. Anyone who feels they are at risk should discuss HIV testing with their GP or the local sexual health clinic.
