Abuja -Aids Health Care Foundation(AHF)an NGO, says it is set to break the Guinness World record on HIV test by testing 10,000 people within eight hours in Benue.
Mrs Elizabeth Duile, the Prevention Program Manager of the Foundation, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.
According to her, the initiative is part of the organisation’s campaign aimed at reawakening government and stakeholders’ commitments towards ensuring that people have access to testing and counseling services.
NAN reports that the campaign initiative is scheduled to take place in Makurdi, Benue capital, from Nov.13 to Nov 14.
“AHF Nigeria is launching an ambitious HIV testing campaign with the hope of breaking the Guinness world record on HIV tests.
“It is an ambitious target because we want to place Nigeria on the global map, by testing 10,000 people in 8 hours in a day.
“This has never been done in Nigeria, and in Africa, other countries have such records but not up to 10,000 clients tested in a day.”
She explained that there were two types of records the foundation hopes to break, which are the single site test and the multiple site tests.
Duile said that the single sites involves testing in a single location with multiple testing points, while multiple sites has testing points indifferent locations a single location but within the same city.
She said Ethiopia was currently holding the record for most tests done in a single site with 3,378 persons tested in an eight hour period in a day.
South Africa, Botswana and Tanzania she said, also held the record for most HIV tests done concurrently across the three countries in a multiple site with 4,367 persons tested in eight hours within one day.
The Prevention Program Manager noted that the foundation hopes to test not fewer than 4,000 people in a single site, and 6,000 for the multiple sites in a day.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
She said that the Foundation would be collaborating with other organisations such as The Nigeria Red Cross, Benue State Aids Control Agency, and volunteers among others in achieving its target.
AHF is a global NGO which was set up to provide free HIV care, treatment, prevention and advocacy and is presently working in 36 countries around the world.
AHF started its operation in Nigeria in 2011 and is currently working in six states
It is providing treatment to more than 7,000 patients.
