HIV Test Results by SMS in Africa and the UK

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is looking into the use of mobile phone technology to help deliver health care in Africa including HIV/ AIDS related testing and treatment.

A study has been conducted in Zambia according to Africa News (where the HIV+ percentage of the population is thought to be 30%) where the time taken to get patients results fell from 42 days to 26 days.

This time period is far longer than Better2Know which can get you an instant results or within 2 days at 99.8% accuracy from just 28 days after exposure.

The UK is also looking at how mobile phones can help with STD testing to improve the uptake and speed of response – especially with young people who are worried they have an STD.

I worked in a hospital in Tanzania for 6 months, where we only used rapid HIV testing for many of the reasons in this study – that it could be difficult to contact patients with the results. Most people in Tanzania have mobile phones (usually more than one network) but the problem was finding the power to charge them.

At Better2Know we make sure that everyone is spoken to with their test results – unless they request an email or SMS, but all positive results are delivered either on the phone or in person if it was something as serious as HIV. Finding out you are HIV+ by text is not really acceptable in the UK, so why should it be in Africa.