An official website of the United States government
National HIV Testing Day — June 27, 2018
Weekly / June 22, 2018 / 67(24);677
National HIV Testing Day, June 27, highlights the importance of testing in detecting, treating, and preventing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Awareness of HIV infection through HIV testing is the first step to prevention, health care, and social services that improve life quality and length of survival (1).
Health care providers and others providing HIV testing can reduce HIV-related adverse health outcomes and risk for HIV transmission by implementing routine and targeted testing to decrease diagnosis delays (2). In this issue, an analysis of national population-based survey data collected during 2006–2016 found that persons with higher risk for HIV in the past year did not achieve CDC’s recommended frequency of at least annual screening and the median time between tests did not change (3). Health care providers and public health practitioners need to intensify efforts to routinely screen all patients for HIV infection, and to identify persons with ongoing risk and ensure that they are engaged in annual screening for HIV infection.
Additional information on National HIV Testing Day is available at https://www.cdc.gov/features/HIVtesting. Basic testing information for the public is available at https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/testing.html. Additional information on HIV testing for health professionals is available at https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/testing. CDC’s guidelines for HIV testing of serum and plasma specimens are available at https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/guidelines/testing.html.
References
- Bradley H, Hall HI, Wolitski RJ, et al. Vital signs: HIV diagnosis, care, and treatment among persons living with HIV—United States, 2011. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2014;63:1113–7. PubMed
- Dailey AF, Hoots BE, Hall HI, et al. Vital signs: human immunodeficiency virus testing and diagnosis delays—United States, 2017. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2017;66:1300–6. CrossRef PubMed
- Pitasi MA, Delaney KP, Oraka E, et al. Time since last HIV test for men and women with recent risk for HIV infection—United States 2006–2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2018;67:677–81.
Suggested citation for this article: National HIV Testing Day — June 27, 2018. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2018;67:677. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6724a1.
MMWR and Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report are service marks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
All HTML versions of MMWR articles are generated from final proofs through an automated process. This conversion might result in character translation or format errors in the HTML version. Users are referred to the electronic PDF version (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr) and/or the original MMWR paper copy for printable versions of official text, figures, and tables.
Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to [email protected].