Cape Town - More than six million South Africans have been tested so far during the HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT) campaign, said Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi.
Speaking at the Human Development Cluster Briefing on Tuesday morning, Dr Motsoaledi said government had reached 6 208 157 South Africans since December last year.
He said a total of six million people had been tested for HIV and around 1 million had tested positive. This constitutes an 18 percent prevalence rate.
President Jacob Zuma launched the HCT campaign in April last year. It aims to promote HIV counselling and testing, encouraging all people to know their HIV status and to be screened for tuberculosis. The campaign was aimed at testing 15 million people by June this year.
"Without this campaign, six million people would not have known their HIV status. The HCT campaign will be accelerated and extended to all sectors in 2011. It will be extended to universities as we did yesterday, to schools as we are planning to do, to farms, villages, major factories and industries like mining.
"We want during that period [until June] sustained discussion and mobilisation so that people can get used to testing and at the end of that period, we want them to continue testing. That's why we are insisting that every health facility must be able to provide this service. We want people to test as many times as possible," he said.
He added that eight other preventative measures had been put in place to prevent HIV transmission, including widespread condom distribution, male medical circumcision and early treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), among others.
Male medical circumcision, Motsoaledi said, is one of the effective interventions put in place to combat the spread of HIV. Last year, all nine provinces vigorously promoted and conducted male medical circumcision, with KwaZulu-Natal taking the lead.
"Since the launch in April last year, they have conducted 17 000 circumcisions. The beautiful thing about this circumcision campaign is that a lot of counseling of the young men takes place there, with traditional advice imparted to the young people, together with the technical aspect of HIV and AIDS on male and female sexuality," he added.
Meanwhile, the Health Department has increased access to condoms. By the end of December last year, a total of 403 839 400 male condoms and 4367185 female condoms had been distributed.
