My name is Ismelda Pietersen. I am the Assistant National VCT Coordinator for the Ministry of Health. We keep on seeing an increase in clients coming for testing because of our mass media campaigns and the introduction of ARVs and the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) interventions did have an impact on people’s decision to come for counseling and testing. Now they felt that there is an incentive and that they can go for counseling and testing and secondly we could also see the numbers increasing because of the introduction of rapid testing.

As you know the Namibian demographics populations are quite scattered around the country. Distances are very far. So clients, when they came for counseling and testing they had to withdraw blood and they had to come back after a certain period and this was a process. Now with rapid testing they can come once and they are serviced at that point of service they go for immediate referral to ARV or PMTCT or any other types of after care.