A Survey Of HIV Voluntary Counseling And Testing Groups In Chaoyang District, Changchun

HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing means people who need to test HIV will make an appropriate choice of whether or not to take the HIV test after they have been fully informed and with completely confidentiality. By providing HIV conseling and testing to individuals in the risk of HIV infection could help to prevent or detect HIV infections earlier, and help to offer feasible treatment services and emotional supports to them. This could help to reduce social discriminations to HIV sufferers, encourage HIV testers to reduce HIV related high-risk behavior and prevent HIV transmission. HIV/AIDS prevalence of Jilin province is in low-level epidemics among the entire nation, however, the number of HIV infected people is increasing recent years for strengthening HIV screening and increasing infection. Up to September 30th, 2008, the total number of HIV infected people is above 800, focusing on Changchun, Jilin and Yanbian. Changchun is the capital of Jilin, whereas, Chaoyang District is the economy, culture and politics centre of Changchun city. According to the HIV/AIDS surveillance data of previous years of Chaoyang District, 65% HIV infected individuals or AIDS sufferers are discovered by VCT, which indicates that VCT services have become one of the most common means of preventing, detecting, and improving access to care and support for HIV/AIDS.ObjectivesThe aim of this paper is to make a picture of the VCT performing in the recent three yeas in Chaoyang District according to the VCT data collected from January 1st, 2006 to April 30th, 2009, based on the characteristic of volunteer center of disease control and prevention (CDC) and exert VCT function in preventing AIDS transmissions, and further offer a scientific support for VCT working in changeable situations in the future.MethodsPeople taking parts in the VCT from January 1st, 2006 to April 30th, 2009 in Chaoyang CDC, were asked to complete a registration form formulated by government and accept a questionnaire voluntarily. Doctors having accepted related training acted as the VCT consultants. A face to face interview was performed between consultants and those who voluntarily seek consultation. During the interviewing, consultants asked those people's informations on demographic characteristics, HIV related risk behaviors and VCT history and fill up the registration form and questionnaire. Blood about 3 milliliter would be collected from people willing to accept HIV testing. VCT clinic and Changchun CDC took charge in the primary screening of HIV, and if the result was positive, confirm testing would be held by Jilin CDC. After the testing result came out, consultants should make tester get better understanding of the meaning of the result and the questions should be noticed in the future.EpiData and SPSS13.0 softwares were used to perform analysis. Rate and ratio were used to describe categorical data, 2χand Fisher's exact tests were used to test the differences between different groups. Mean and stand deviance were used to descript continuous variables. 2χtest was used to calculate the relationship between variables and HIV testing.Results1. Male, young and Han were the main characters of the total 894 VCT participants. Most of them were highly educated, about 71.1% were senior middle school or above; 80.1% came from Jilin province; jobless accounted for 22.3%. The posible reasons for these might be: 1) these groups of people were in the active sex period. Their sex relationship with others had not been stable. Extramarital sex and risk sexual behaviors were common, so they might considered themselves having more chances to expose to HIV. 2) New things might be more easily accepted by the youth than the elder, so more youth asked help from VCT. 3) The youth might be exposed to more information of VCT than the older. So more youth than the older asked help from VCT. 4) High educated people accepted VCT much easier than others. This mighte be related with their background and also the way of publicizing HIV.2. Expect for variables of education level and census register, variables of age, gender, marital status, ethic and occupation did not show any signigicantly increasing or descreasing trends among VCT participants in the three years. More VCT participants received high education and more individual came from Jilin province over time. Reasons for these could be people with more HIV knowledge might be more likely to accept VCT. More VCT participants coming from Jilin province indicated that VCT might be accepted by local generous population gradually these years and more local people might expose to HIV related risk behaviors than before.3. Historic risk sexual behavior was the main reason for people to seek VCT. In the study, about 79.5%(771/894)of participants seek VCT for this reason.4. 227(25.4%) among people who tested HIV had a history of HIV testing. And the rest 667 (74.6%) was the first time to test HIV. There was no signigicantly difference in the proportion of people who had a history of HIV testing in the three years.5. Among participants who tested HIV 885 (99.0%) accepted post-test counseling. It indicated that post-test counseling had a good accessibility to HIV testers.6. Eight people were found HIV positive among 894 VCT participants from January 1st, 2006 to April 30th, 2009. HIV positive rate among those participants was 0.9%. Individuals who were HIV positive were all males and infected through sex contacts. What was worth paying attention to were two man were infected through homosexual behaviors and both of them were not married (one of them was a college student).33 participants self reported had homosexual behaviors and HIV infection rate among those individuals was 6.1% (2/33) which was significantly higher than that in whose who had only heterosexual behaviors, 0.9% (6/680). It indicated that homosexual behaviors risk much more than heterosexual behaviors in HIV transmission.7. There were 461 people seeking help from VCT clinic in Chaoyang District from Jan 1st to April 30th in 2009. 214 individuals among them tested HIV, and HIV testing rate was 46.4%. HIV testing rates were significantly different among people with different occupations.8. Participants placed emphasis on different aspects of AIDS. They were more interested in questions on HIV testing (such as whether it was free or not to take the test, what credentialswere required, when the results could come out), route of transmission of AIDS, and the posibility of being infected. People who cared more about his heath status of being infected were more likely to take HIV testing. Discrimination and confidentiality were main factors to worry about for participants not taking HIV testing. 9. Male consultants were more likely to persuade female VCT consulters to take HIV testing than female consultants.Conclusions1. Main features for people who voluntarily seek consultation in Chaoyang District CDC of Changchun were 1) high proportion of them were male and youth; 2) most of them were high educated; 3) proportion of new consulters is highness; 4) post-test counseling had a good accessability to people.2. Main features for HIV positive people discovered in VCT clinic of Chaoyang CDC were male and infected through sex contacts. Homosexual contact was a non-neglect route for HIV transmission.3. Main influence factors of people to test HIV were social factors, consulter factor and consultant factor.4. People who tested HIV in VCT clinic showed evelated level of education, increasing proportion of people coming from Jilin province and raising percentage of MSM; more people began to seek help from psychological counseling and care department. This is the tendency of VCT service in the past three years.