News — The Potential of HIV Self Testing

The global community has come a long way in the fight against AIDS. In the last decade AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 45% and new HIV infection rates by almost 10%. On top of this, there are currently over 17 million people receiving anti retroviral treatment (ART). These are impressive sounding statistics, but do they point to the near-defeat of AIDS?  Despite such exciting figures, they do not actually reveal a potentially dangerous trend. We could, in fact, be heading towards an outcome whereby the epidemic outruns the response. Time is of the essence. Rather than approaching a world with “zero new...