HIV Self-Testing at the Workplace

In 2025, the world is committed to achieve the 95-95-95 testing, treatment, and viral suppression targets. In order to achieve the first target on 95% of people living with HIV (PLHIV) to know their status, a set of priority actions must take place. One of which is increasing the uptake of differentiated HIV testing strategies, including HIV self-testing, and strengthening the linkage of people who access testing services to HIV prevention and treatment services.

HIV self-testing (HIVST) is an innovative testing option recommended by WHO in 2016 that can be used to reach people who may not test otherwise, including men, young people, and key populations (men who have sex with men/MSM, people who inject drugs, transgender people, and sex workers). HIVST allowed a person to collect his or her own specimen (oral fluid or blood) and then perform a test and interpret the result, often in a private setting, unassisted or assisted by trained providers or peers. HIVST increased patient autonomy, decentralize services, and create demand for HIV testing among populations unreached through existing services. Following the release of WHO guidelines in 2016, as of June 2018, 59 countries have adapted the HIVST policies, and many others are developing them, including Indonesia.

Indonesia’s testing coverage is currently at 66% of PLHIV know their status in 2020. In order to get the country on track to achieve the new 2025 targets, particularly the first 95% testing target, Indonesia needs to implement innovative approaches to increase testing and treatment coverage, including through HIVST. At present, the country, through the Ministry of Health (MoH), is developing a guideline to adopt and implement community/self-testing. A scaled-up pilot implementation is aimed to take place in 2022 with the support from the Global Fund. Additionally, to prepare the pilot project, various implementation research on community/self-testing among KPs using an oral fluid rapid diagnostic test (RDT) have taken place. In 2020, Yayasan Spiritia, with the support from the Global Fund, conducted a research study on community-based HIV self-screening among MSM, transgender, and people who inject drugs in 10 selected districts. Key uptakes from the study showed high acceptability among key populations and strong linkage with care.

Furthermore, the MoH estimated that in 2019, non-key populations accounted a larger majority of new infections (an estimated 64%) than of key populations. And in 2020, the majority of PLHIV in Indonesia (512,956 out of 543,100) is in productive age of 15-49 years old. With that in mind, the workplace becomes an important setting where HIVST needs to also be promoted and implemented. This is particularly for certain industries with high risk of HIV, such as mining, construction, petroleum, and many others. The workers in such industries may not have easy access to HIV testing services, and the workplace may be the best place to reach them. Responding to this situation, ILO Indonesia is collaborating with two Indonesian state-owned companies to implement HIV self-testing at the workplace.

To that end, UNAIDS and ILO are intending to hold a webinar with the theme of “HIV Self-Testing at the Workplace”. This webinar is supported by the United Nations COVID-19 Response and Recovery Multi Partner Trust Fund (UN COVID-19 MPTF). This project aims for the recovery and improvement of economy and livelihood of vulnerable groups of people who are most affected by the pandemic, including women, youth, refugees, migrant workers, people living with HIV, key populations most vulnerable to HIV and people living in disadvantaged regions.

The objective of this webinar are the following: