Is home HIV testing feasible?
Home-access testing for HIV met with virtually unanimous opposition when it was first proposed. 1 Today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), leading clinicians, gay activists and AIDS advocates have all endorsed home access testing. 2 The barriers to home access testing have not been technical, as feasibility studies have demonstrated. 3 Home testing has been possible for more than a decade. Actually, “home testing” is a little misleading: customers don’t actually get on-the-spot results, the way they do with home test kits for glucose, cholesterol, blood pressure or pregnancy. The tests are really at-home “collection kits” to be purchased over the counter or through the mail. A test kit purchaser pricks his/her finger, puts a drop of blood on a piece of blotter paper, sends it off in the mail, then phones for results and counseling after a specified time. In the spring of 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first HIV home collection test kit, Confide. The kit,
