Know your HIV status in 20 minutes at Bride and Groom Expo

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Despite the concerted effort to combat HIV prevalence in the country, infections among young people continue to rise.

According to the annual Joint AIDS Review Report 2023/2024, most of the new HIV infections are among young people aged 15-24 years, especially adolescent girls and young women who bear 30% of the burden.

It is against this background that the Uganda AIDS Commission and Human Diagnostics Uganda have camped at the Bride and Groom Expo 2025 to disseminate HIV prevention messages as well as offer testing services to couples, especially the young ones.

“We are here to connect with adolescent and young couples, which is key, given the fact that HIV prevalence is high among young people,” Joan Kemigisha, the head of communication and advocacy at the Uganda AIDS Commission, says.

Oral HIV self-test services

To ensure that the general public, including young people, get to know their HIV status, the Uganda AIDS Commission and Human Diagnostics Uganda is offering oral HIV self-test services.

The Oral HIV Self-test service enables you to know your HIV status within 20 minutes. The Oral Quick HIV self-test kit comes with a swab and a buffer.

How to use oral self-test kit

The assistant product manager at Human Diagnostics Uganda, Perez Wagubi, advises passing the swab in the upper and lower gum to collect the sample. After, place the swab in the buffer for 20 minutes, before reading the results.

When you see two lines, it means you could be HIV positive and, therefore, need to do a confirmatory test at the nearest health facility, Wagubi notes. He is quick to add that the results are 99% accurate.

The burden

New HIV infections reduced from 46,000 in 2020 to 38,000 in 2023, which translates into 100 people getting infected with HIV every day.

The same report indicates that in a space of one year, only 4,700 children between 0 to 14 years acquired HIV infection from their positive mothers, hence translating into a 5.04 % infection rate. This is a reduction from 5,900 new HIV infections that were recorded among children in 2023.

In 2020, the country registered 21,000 AIDS-related deaths, and they slightly reduced to 20,000 by June 2024, against the 2025 target of 10,800.

An estimated 1,492,410 people were living with HIV as of December 2023, and of those, there are more women than men living with HIV.