Editor,

RE: "World AIDS Day: Call for action” (The New Times, December 1).

We need innovative approaches in tackling HIV despite the efforts and resources that have been pulled into this battle. The Ministry of Health needs to come up with aggressive yet innovative and appropriate approaches to encourage people to know their status.

One of the ways I think could increase the numbers of people who test is to organise anonymous HIV testing programmes where individuals would be tested without necessarily giving their real identities. Such programme should be organised in a way that testing individuals are assigned codes which would serve as the basis of future statistics and information gathering.

I believe that more individuals would turn up if they know that nobody will ask them their real identities (despite the medical secrecy, some people still fear that their information may leak in one way or another).

Another approach would be to make efforts in availing self-testing equipment and facilitate their accessibility to the wider public. Individuals would get hands on them and test themselves in the secret of their homes.

More sensitisation should also continue, with innovative approaches.

I hope the Ministry of Health and other responsible authorities will consider this as we battle this killer disease.

Kabanda