Providing free school uniforms to enable children to stay in school, in addition to exposing primary school students to the national HIV/AIDS prevention curriculum, appeared to have a greater effect on reducing risky sexual behaviours among youth and in particular girls in Western Kenya than either intervention alone, Dr Vandana Sharma reported at the 19th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) in Washington. The randomised trial comprised over 19,000 youths (50% female) enrolled in one of 328 primary schools from 2003 to 2006. The follow-up cross-sectional survey looking at herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2) prevalence and behavioural outcomes took place between February 2009 and March 2011, six to seven years after the intervention.

A study amongst 2443 people in Zambia, recruited from HIV clinics and community organisations, found that social ostracism, rejection by sexual partners and fear of not being able to handle antiretroviral therapy (ART) were the reasons people most often gave for not testing for HIV. A session at the 19th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) in Washington heard that, perhaps surprisingly, in terms of demographic characteristics, people living in cities were far less likely to test than people in rural areas.

International medicines financing mechanism UNITAID will invest more than US$140 million to evaluate point-of-care HIV diagnostic and monitoring technology in seven African countries. New technology could help put more people living with HIV on treatment faster and improve care, UNITAID partners said at the international AIDS conference in Washington DC. Point-of-care (PoC) technology provides health workers with access to complicated test results at the clinic level, but can also change how patients use the health system - not always for the better.