HIV test mandatory for University entrants..

By Gagani Weerakoon and Skandha Gunasekara-2015-12-08

The government is planning to make it mandatory for University entrants to undergo HIV screening and blood tests for other socially communicable diseases before they enter Universities.

Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine Minister Dr.Rajitha Senaratne said in Parliament yesterday that HIV screening would be done under a different description to ensure there's no inadvertent stigma attached to it. Government was also looking into the feasibility of introducing the test to cover all students in public and private sector schools and members of all youth organizations as well, he said.
The Minister said that lessons on socially transmitted diseases would be included in the school curriculum and government would make Health Science a compulsory subject for GCE (OL) students to qualify to pursue GCE (AL) studies.

Responding to a question raised by Matara District UPFA MP Dullas Alahapperuma, the Minister said that there were 71 children below the age of 9 years including 31 girls with HIV infection.Between the age of 10-14 years there were five male and two female children while there were seven male and six female children in the 15 to 19 years age group. Between the age group of 20-29 years there were 478 HIV infected youth of whom 319 were males. In the age group of 30-39 years, there were 822 total HIV positive persons including 496 males. Above 40 there were 527 males and 290 females. In addition, there were 57 HIV infected in higher age groups bringing the sum total of HIV positive persons in the country to 2,265. This comprises 1425 males and 840 females.
Among the HIV infected there were 20 schools children and since 2010, the number of HIV infected reported was 1,062, the minister said. All the children below the age of 15 years have got the infection from their mothers, the minister said.
Describing the action adopted by the government in respect of persons infected HIV through blood transfusion the Minister said that such cases were refer to the STD/AIDS control programme for necessary treatment. The National blood Transfusion Service had started blood-tests with the help of new technology to minimize the infection of HIV through blood transfusion, he said.