Home \ Project News \ Reaching Out to the 13 to 18 Years Olds with HIV Testing in Butuo
Maxwell Chigutsa is the TCE Division Commander in Liangshan Prefecture where he oversees the running of both TCE Butuo and TCE Yuexi. Maxwell has worked in the TCE program since 2004. His vast experience is therefore important in helping to bring about change in terms of controlling and preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Here Maxwell shares his experience about HIV Home testing in Butuo:
“We started testing pregnant women in March 2015. In June this year we held a conference with different departments discussing the possibility of expanding our testing targets not only to focus on pregnant women. After discussions with Butuo County Public Health Bureau we have now been given green light and so we will continue testing pregnant women and further include 13 to 18 year olds in the testing target. “
What is Maxwell’s feeling on testing the 13 to 18 year olds? What impact will it have on the program or the community? Maxwell responds:
“Early marriage is rampant in Butuo and it is taken as something normal within the community. Many of the adolescents start engaging in sexual activities at an early age. My belief is that to start testing them at the age of 13 is very suitable and necessary. It is good that we identify the infected earlier, before they spread the virus. It is also important that we give them education on how to avoid being infected and to those who are infected how to avoid infecting others. We will also help these teenagers understand more about avoiding re-infection. In the project we welcome the idea of testing these teenagers and we hope this will help in curbing the spread of HIV. We think the adage ‘Catch them young’ works very well in this situation.”
A brief summary of the project:
TCE Butuo is a 3.5 years HIV/AIDS project operating in Butuo County, Liangshan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. The idea of the project during the 3.5 years campaign is to achieve total control of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Butuo County reaching out to a population of 100,000 people. The project does one-on-one, door-to-door visits to all villagers reaching out to them with health education, mobilization and voluntary home-based counseling and testing. The project furthermore involves a Passionate Network and training of local leaders and influential people who support in information dissemination and mobilization work.