continue to screen despite the health crisis

This December 1st is World AIDS Day. It is difficult to talk about it in this period of the Covid epidemic, yet the question is still important: raising public awareness to improve screening. In Limoges, caregivers and associations are mobilizing.

“Do you know how to get tested for sexually transmitted infections?” “What are the benefits of a condom?”

We followed a prevention session at the end of a high school in Limoges. Sylvain Rouilhac, of the Entr’AIDSida Limousin association, questions adolescents through small games to better inform and sensitize them.

The high school students we met have all heard of AIDS and condoms are part of their environment.

But the questions remain:
“We talk more about Covid than AIDS, when it is just as important”.
“I know it’s lifelong after. Although there are ways to mitigate it, we have it until the end of our days.”

Stay mobilized

It is not easy to mobilize in the midst of the Covid epidemic, but the challenge of screening is now important. There are 6,200 new contaminations a year in France.

For Sylvain Rouilhac, we need to stay mobilized:
“An HIV-positive person under treatment who has an undetectable viral load has little risk of transmitting the virus. Hence the importance of getting tested, because through screening we discover, discover that we treat and treating we contain the spread of the virus.”

Selection

While in prison, CEGIDD, the Limoges University Hospital screening center, remains open.

It is anonymous and free. All you have to do is call to make an appointment and avoid clogging up the waiting room.

First, there is an interview to better identify risk taking. Then comes an appropriate screening, treatment is possible right before or right after exposure to the virus. Other sexually transmitted infections are also being tested.

A young woman we met didn’t hesitate to come and take the test: “The first time we come, we realize that the results could have been positive and we could come out with the same face. Upgrade.”

Stigma

An important step, because even though AIDS kills far less in France, Dr Pauline Pinet, from the infectious disease department at Limoges University Hospital, notes that the disease is still stigmatizing: “We live with AIDS, but it requires daily care, and there is a rejection of this disease that remains a difficult disease to expose to the public.”

Anyone can come for the tests: young people who are starting their sexuality or adults who are ending a long relationship.
Doctors and associations also go out to meet vulnerable, migrant or precarious people who are, like Covid, particularly at risk.