Kenya has one of the highest HIV infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, yet testing rates are worryingly low, less than 20%. Low testing rates and social stigma dampen people’s desire to get tested and prevent HIV positive people from finding acceptance and integrating fully into their communities. Often, people who are HIV positive find that work and educational prospects are closed to them, making it difficult to provide for themselves and their families. Without treatment or preventive measures, people with HIV often are co-infected with other opportunistic diseases that keep them sick, weak, and less able to take part in day to day life. Not surprisingly, many people prefer to simply not know their status because the alternative—poor medical support, social rejection, uncertain future—is so appalling.

In 2008, an integrated public health campaign was launched in Lurambi District, Kenya that aimed to tackle both the low testing rate and social stigma attached to testing and HIV positive people in a novel way. Local residents were offered a CarePack® of preventive interventions containing a water filter, anti-malaria bed net, condoms, and educational material as incentive to participate in a voluntary HIV counseling and testing program. This simple incentive that awarded every participant with tools that could prevent diarrheal disease, HIV infection and STIs, and malaria, brought an overwhelmingly positive response from the community.

We hope that you will see the film and meet members of the Lurambi community as they decide to participate in the campaign and learn how their lives change after they take The Test.

Then engage your community and take The Test  to your nonprofit, club, chapter meeting, school, or theater, because knowing changes everything.

The Test is brought to you by Vestergaard Frandsen.