“To announce HIV status is to announce that we are going to live”: a day of HIV testing in Creuse

Environ 150,000 people live with AIDS in Franceincluding around fifty in Creuse, but some are unaware of it due to lack of screening. In this context, Entr'AIDSida and CeGIDD, the Free HIV Information, Screening and Diagnosis Center, traveled to the Delphine Gay high school and the Bourganeuf hospital center this Friday, November 29. Beyond traditional blood tests, TRODs were offered. These tests allow you to obtain a result in a few minutes.

Throughout the day, no tests were positive but even if this had been the case, Sylvain Rouillac, project manager for Entr'AIDSida, wants to be reassuring: “Announcing HIV status means announcing that we are going to live thanks to the treatments we have. Today, a large majority of HIV-positive people are living with AIDS.” If the number of positive tests stagnates in Creuse, there are however more and more sexually transmitted diseases.

Of the 2,000 tests carried out each year in the department, almost a third of them reveal syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea,…A phenomenon that affects “all generations” explains Doctor Pierre Maumy from the Guéret hospital center: “Many young people no longer protect themselves from their first relationship. They have not lived through the AIDS generation, it is not an illness that scares them. And what's more, I think that when they are in a relationship after three or four months with the same person, they feel that they no longer need to protect themselves.”

According to a WHO report, condom use among adolescents has declined significantly in 10 years. In 2022, among 15-year-old adolescents responding to the study, approximately 30% admitted not having used a condom during their last report.