Friday, June 24, at the occasion of the 7th edition of the Caribbean Day for testing HIV/AIDS 2016 organized by the National Programme of Fight against AIDS (PNLS) under the patronage of the Ministry of Public Health and the United Nations in Haiti (UNAIDS), the entire population, and especially young people, are invited Friday to come to learn and perform a free test at the "Espace Volontariats", located at 20 avenue Lamartinière in Bois Verna (Port-au-Prince), from 8:00 to 4:00 p.m. Health professionals and young volunteers trained to questions on HIV / AIDS from several organizations (America Solidaria COHAIV, France Volunteers, UNV and TECHO) will be present around the Centre to raise awareness, educate and invite inhabitants to do the test in order to know their HIV status, to prevent new cases and to stop the spread of this epidemic.

Haiti is a priority country for accelerating the elimination of HIV by 2030. To date, 150,000 people have HIV in Haiti, representing 55% of the number of people living with HIV in all Caribbean countries. Progress has nevertheless been noted according to available data from UN AIDS. The number of HIV-positive people on treatment in Haiti has more than doubled from 2010 to 2015, new infections have declined by over 27% since 2004 and AIDS deaths are down 49% since 2008. In 2015, the rate of transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies at 6 weeks down to 4.51% from over 12% in 2010.

Despite these advances, in Haiti 7,500 HIV positive people die each year. The prevalence rate among adults 15 to 49 years is 2.2% (1.7% for men and 2.7% for women), but it amounts to 18.5% for men who have sex with men and 8.4% among sex workers. The percentage of young women aged 15 to 24 living with HIV is three times higher than for boys of the same age.

IH/ iciHaiti