Youth and Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT)
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Good day:
Hope your day is going well. I am writing to request your assis-
tance in identifying a young person to speak about their experi-
ence and views on VCT at the upcoming seminar on Youth and VCT.
I have been trying to identify young people, mostly interna-
tional students, based in the DC metro area but have not found
any yet. The seminar is being organized by Horizon and is sched-
uled for the 28th of September.
Below is brief on the seminar:
HIV voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) is a valuable way to
encourage adults to adopt safer sexual behaviours and to iden-
tify those who need care and treatment. However, there are spe-
cial issues when considering the role that VCT can play in HIV
prevention and care for youth. For example, youth may not feel
comfortable using adult VCT services because of concerns about
confidentiality and judgmental attitudes of providers. Also many
young people who test positive - and most of these will be fe-
male - will not be clinically ready to take ARVs, thus limiting
the role of VCT as an entry point for treatment. Moreover, in
many countries, despite a high prevalence of sexually active
youth, young people under 18 years of age cannot undergo HIV
testing without parental consent.
This seminar will highlight research findings, field experi-
ences, and youth perspectives that address these programmatic
and policy challenges. Specifically, it will focus on youth-
oriented strategies to strengthen HIV counselling and to in-
crease VCT utilization and satisfaction with services. It will
also examine key policy issues that affect youth, such as access
to treatment and care, age of consent, and provider-initiated
testing.
Please let me know if you have any young people within your pro-
gram or network, preferably from a developing country, whom you
may recommend for this.
Thanks,
Maxwell Marx
mailto:MMarx@fhi.org