Today is World AIDS Day, a great opportunity to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and its effects on local and global populations.  If you love surfing the web, it’s really hard to miss – Google has its AIDS ribbon, and on both twitter and Facebook you can “go red” (check out JoinRed for more information).  What we want to do to draw attention to this epidemic today is talk about home hiv testing, which has become so easy with the advent of the home hiv test.

Of course testing is important in terms of protecting yourself and others from HIV/AIDS.  As I blogged about earlier, public health experts encourage everyone to get HIV tested.  But as the Washington Post reports in “WHO: Treat HIV Patients Sooner,” it is also important to know your status because early treatment is extremely important.

Although this applies mostly to non-Western countries, the World Health Organization has just issued new guidance suggesting AIDS patients should begin taking drugs a year or two earlier (and of course, you can’t do this if you don’t take an AIDS test and find out if you are positive!).  “In most erectile dysfunction Western countries, doctors start treating HIV patients when their CD4 count is about 500″ the article says, and the WHO is trying to encourage everyone to begin medication at higher CD4 count levels (the previous recommendation was 200; now it is 350), CD4 being a measure of the immune system, and CD4 tests being an important aspect of HIV treatment.

So, as the WHO encourages early treatment just in time for World AIDS Day, we encourage early detection, which can be done in a clinic or anonymously at home with a home HIV test.  Home testing is just as accurate as testing done in the hospital – and you can learn more about it by reading our Home HIV Testing resources or either of our product pages (Express Home HIV Test Kit or the Standard Home HIV Test Kit).  We hope that as World AIDS Day raises awareness today, we can help raise awareness of the type of options you have at hand to determine your HIV/AIDS status.  Please spread the word about World AIDS Day and take a moment to raise awareness and help stop AIDS today!