New Start celebrates increase in HIV testing and counselling
The Society for Family Health (SFH) and New Start today celebrated the testing of 120 000 clients to date. This number is an indication of the increase in uptake of HIV counselling and testing among South Africans.
“We're pleased to have helped 120,000 people make those plans,” said Scott Billy, Technical Advisor for New Start.
This is a celebration of the 120,000 people who have come to New Start to make a new start in their lives, and an encouragement for more citizens to be tested. Being tested at New Start is all about making a plan. If you test positive, what are you going to do to remain healthy with HIV and avoid spreading the virus? And if you test negative, what are you going to do to remain negative? “We're pleased to have helped 120,000 people make those plans,” said Scott Billy, Technical Advisor for New Start.
In April 2008, New Start's client flow increased drastically with them having tested 11,500 people. And as of 31 May 2008, 52% of New Start's clients fell into their main target market of men. “From our intake figures it is good to see that New Start continues to see more men than women clients. In general in South Africa, far more women than men have been tested but every month at New Start, our clients are in the majority male. We developed the service to appeal to men. Men told us they wanted an anonymous, high quality, convenient and affordable HIV counselling and testing service and we're pleased that they are responding well to the service we developed.”
New Start's first three sites opened in December 2004 in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg. In 2007, four more sites were opened in and thus far, three sites have already opened in 2008. Their objective is to complement government of South Africa's activities by seeing the groups of people who do not normally visit health centres, which are men, couples and the asymptomatic. New Start gives their clients a safe and anonymous place where they can be tested and know their status immediately. The centres provide citizens with an inexpensive, accessible way to discover their status and work with trained counsellors to come up with a plan to live long and be strong, whether they test positive or negative.
Looking to the future, New Start will be opening six more sites giving them a standing in all nine of South Africa's provinces.
About New Start
New Start currently has 9 sites located in Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Musina, East London, Mthatha, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Middledrift, Mafikeng and Cape Town. Each site also operates a mobile HIV testing service that can bring high quality New Start services to communities, churches, malls and workplaces. New Start is funded by the National Department of Health and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
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