–As National Week of Testing gets underwayA total of 30,000 persons are being targeted for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) testing next month as part of the Ministry of Health’s National AIDS Programme National Week of Testing 2010 programme.National Week of Testing will be observed from November 22 through 26 but will be kicked into motion today with the public testing of Disc Jockeys (DJs) at the National Communications Network (NCN)’s Homestretch Avenue headquarters. The activity is set to commence at 09:00 hours.This year’s Testing Week will be held under the theme “confidential and reliable; get tested now” and will mark the fifth time Guyana will be hosting the activity.According to NAPS’s Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) Coordinator,NFL Jerseys China, Mrs Debra Success,Deion Sanders Falcons Jersey, it was just last week that NAPS was able to establish relationships with local DJs. The DJs were represented by Kester Dean.According to Success, it has been discovered that DJs are very important to the testing drive as they are thought to be very influential persons, thus the need to partner with them. And as part of the partnership, Success noted that efforts will be geared at raising awareness about the National Week of Testing activity in order to amplify the need for persons to know their status.“We are hoping that persons will be educated,Cheap NFL Jerseys China, sensitised and motivated to utilise the testing sites that will be established in the different administrative regions.”From left: Debra Success, Dr Shanti Singh and Hydar AllyThe VCT Coordinator disclosed that at present there are over 400 testing sites that can be utilised during testing week.In clarifying the purpose of the testing activity, NAPS Programme Manager, Dr Shanti Singh, noted that often it is assumed that VCT is simply about finding HIV positive people.“I want to re-emphasise the point that voluntary counselling and testing while it is about finding positive persons and referring them into a treatment programme it is about ensuring that those people that are negative remain negative.”For this reason, she disclosed that the activity includes a counselling component, which is characterised by pre- and post-test counselling. Some of the issues discussed during these sessions, she revealed, are risk reduction, particularly as it relates to the number of partners an individual has, and correct and consistent condom use for those persons who are HIV negative.“Our mandate here at the Secretariat is really to control the spread of this disease. But for us to control the spread of this disease, particularly important first is how do we reduce new infections?”Dr Singh noted that it must be appreciated that it is because of VCT programmes that new infections have decreased. HIV prevalence, she said, has moved from 2.4 percent in 2005 to about 1.3 percent as at the end of last year.“I think that the voluntary counselling and testing programme was key and instrumental in ensuring that we continue to reduce new infections. Therefore it represents a key programme within our overall gamut of prevention services that we provide.”According to Dr Singh,Cheap NFL Jerseys, last year the testing activity had comfortably surpassed the 20,000 targets that were set,Cheap NFL Jerseys, thus the expectation that the 30,000 targets this year, which was called for by Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy, will be easily exceeded. Close to 29,000 persons were tested last year, an undertaking that Dr Singh regarded as a tremendous amount of work.“We anticipate that this year will be no different…but we look forward to everyone’s participation.”And in living up to the theme there will be certain elements that will be guaranteed during National Week of Testing, according to Dr Singh. Among these, she said, is that of confidentiality, and she insists that quality will not be compromised in anyway.Quality teams will be dispatched to make sure that the services provided with regards to both counselling and testing will be of the same standard as if conducted as a regular VCT sites.At the end of last year just over 85,000 persons were tested through the VCT programme,Cheap NFL Jerseys, Dr Singh revealed.“When you add that to the close to 12,000 testing in the PMTCT programme which is the prevention of mother to child transmission programme and the blood bank screening of blood products we have conducted a little over 100,000 tests for 2009.”Despite all of the tests conducted, Dr Singh said that when the results were received from the Demographic Health Survey, it