Good morning, team, and welcome to this vital training on HIV Counseling and Testing.
Today, you are acquiring more than just a new skill set—you are stepping into a profound responsibility. As representatives carrying the name of the Department of Health, your work directly reflects our collective commitment to public health, human dignity, and compassionate service.
As a return on this investment in your training, our expectation is clear: we need you to serve actively and help drive HIV case finding so we can finally END the HIV epidemic.
Through this training, you will master the core pillars of HIV counseling and testing:
Correct Results: Delivering accurate, reliable testing with precision and professional rigor.
Confidentiality: Maintaining strict privacy to build an unbreakable foundation of trust with every patient.
Consent: Respecting autonomy and ensuring every patient is fully informed and willing.
Counseling: Offering non-judgmental, compassionate guidance before and after every test.
Connection to Care: Ensuring no patient who tests reactive walks away alone, but is immediately linked to lifesaving treatment and support.
You will leave here with the tools. You will leave here with the skills. But tools and skills alone are not enough—you must bring the HEART for Persons Living with HIV (PLHIV). Empathy is your most powerful asset when standing beside someone receiving a reactive result.
Arthur Ashe famously said, "Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can."
Look at where we are right now. Among all HIV testing modalities, inpatient HIV screening is second only to index testing in yield and impact. Every single day, we have direct access to patients across our hospital wards. We have the exact opportunity Arthur Ashe spoke of right in front of us.
Help us implement opt-out HIV screening for inpatients. By making HIV testing a routine, standard part of inpatient care, we break down barriers, normalize testing, and actively dismantling the stigma and discrimination that still surround PLHIV.
HIV does not discriminate—and neither should we.
Let us lead with skill, serve with integrity, and care with heart. Together, let’s make an AIDS-free generation a reality. Thank you, and let’s make this training count!
