Quick Oral Swab HIV Test Approved Recently

On July the 3rd, the FDA has approved an innovative HIV home test kit after long years of controversy.

The test can be used by patients to test for HIV infection. Even the CDC (Centers for Disease and Control Prevention) highly recommends that particularly people between 17 and 60+ years of age should make the test, preventatively.

Now, testing for HIV has become easy, quick, and painless thanks to the new product called OraQuick Advance Rapid HIV ½ Antibody Test. The test will most probably be available in pharmacies and grocery stores by October this year. Regarding pricing, officials say it will be slightly more expensive than the typical $17,50 charged at medical offices.

The test can diagnose HIV type 1 & type 2, and the results show in about 25 to 40 minutes. The patient needs to take a saliva sample from the gumline and this is it. A few years ago, the patient needed to send blood samples to the lab, and wait sometimes for weeks for the results to show.

Everybody in the health field agrees, that the approval of this new saliva based test, is a huge leap towards learning to control this global epidemic much better.

In America, there are currently 1.2 million people infected, and globally, there are around 40 million people struggling with the disease. In 2010 alone, 1.8 million people died because of the unmerciful disease.

HIV/AIDS used to be regarded as a huge mark of shame, but it is not anymore. There are just too many collateral victims of the disease, and just too many children being born with the infection and they are innocent…

Ever since the 80’s, large pharmaceutical companies have been struggling to be able to bring to the market a home test kit which does not require taking blood or any other more complex testing means. Thirty years later, the quick and easy saliva test is here, and it should be used, because it helps saving lives!

This simple test is actually a health tool which helps diagnosing early the disease. If caught in an early stage, the disease can be kept under control, and the patient’s quality of life made much better.

It is important to remember that the test always needs to be confirmed by a specialty doctor, and people who engage themselves in relationships where they change partners often, should do the test regularly.