When Prince Harry puts his notoriety at the service of a great cause, the effect is immediate among the British. On July 14, we told you about the live broadcast of his HIV test on Facebook: today, the video has more than two million views.
The Terrence Higgins Trust, an HIV charity, jointly carried out an awareness campaign to provide free testing to the population.
As a result, it claims to have recorded a phenomenal jump in self-test requests, from 32 to 150 per day, an increase of 400%.
“We know that one in six people living with HIV do not know they are HIV positive,” said Michael Brady, medical director of the Terrence Higgins Trust. As a result, this operation enabled 26 people to test their seropositivity and therefore to undertake adequate medical follow-up.
The HIV self-test, in addition to being inexpensive, requires only a drop of blood and provides a result in less than thirty minutes.
The fight against the AIDS virus continues
A need to raise awareness about the disease that Prince Harry carries every day through his charity Sentebale, which helps children affected by the HIV epidemic in Lesotho.
“As people with HIV live longer, AIDS is a topic that no longer makes the headlines,” he said at the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.
Even today, 2.5 million people around the world are infected with the AIDS virus each year, a figure that has not declined for ten years. In Africa, it is the leading cause of death among 10-19 year olds.
“By helping young people fight HIV, we would not just end the epidemic, we would be changing the course of history for a whole generation,” said Prince Harry.
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