At least half of people in Poland with HIV infection start treatment too late. Meanwhile, early detection allows for effective therapy and improved quality of life. European Testing Week is underway. Experts and government officials are taking this opportunity to remind people that HIV testing can be done safely, anonymously, free of charge and without a referral.
European Testing Week
HIV infection does not display on face
Published Nov. 19, 2024 09:19
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- HIV infection does not display itself on the face. You can't see it, so you need to get this test done and not assume in advance that I don't have a risk because I have one regular partner or one regular partner. If anyone has ever had sex without a condom in their life, they should take this test. One of the recommendations is also to get tested before entering into a new sexual relationship," says Dr. Bartosz Szetela of the Wroclaw Health Center, an infectious disease specialist from the Department of Infectious Diseases, Liver Diseases and Acquired Immune Deficiencies at the Piast Silesian Medical University in Wroclaw.
HIV infection is a chronic infection these days, he stresses, and treatment is publicly funded for every insured person. This allows people to survive in good health until old age.
- Of course, it is simpler to live without HIV than with it. It is also simpler to live with HIV diagnosed early rather than late in the AIDS stage, he adds.
As it turns out, the fundamental problem is not that people are afraid to get tested, although that matters too, but mostly that people think the problem doesn't affect them.
- In Poland, the attitude still persists that HIV is only a problem of so-called "at-risk groups," as they used to be called, or key populations: men who have sex with men, sex workers or migrants. Today we know that anyone can be infected. Half of the diagnoses are late diagnoses, in which older, heterosexual people predominate," points out Dr. Bartosz Szetela.
Information on where to get an HIV test free of charge and anonymously can be found on these websites:
