WINDHOEK – The Total Control of the Epidemic (TCE) organisation has warned that forging HIV results would have serious legal implications for the guilty.
In an interview with New Era on Friday, Sarti Shikalepo, TCE’s quality assurance officer in Khomas Region cited the recent incidents of women forging their HIV results to ‘negative’ in their health passports.
TCE, which forms part of the Development Aid from People to People (DAPP) Namibia organisation, has since last year been testing people in the comfort of their homes by deploying volunteers to test people particularly those in the informal settlements.
Close to 8 000 people were tested in Windhoek between March and December last year, through door-to-door testing, TCE revealed in an earlier interview with this newspaper.
Shikalepo said women who are HIV positive went to the Otjomuise and Okuryangava clinics under the pretext that they were going for a rapid HIV test. After getting the clinic stamp, the women then wrote in their health passports that they were tested for HIV and ‘the result is negative’.
“It’s really not good, they are not supposed to write in those health passports – it’s only the health professionals. So, it’s illegal,” a rather concerned Shikalepo added.
Asked to explain how the culprits fake their HIV results, Shikalepo explained: “They go to the clinic and ask for a stamp because they know that HIV testing is free of charge (at the state health facilities) and the secretary will just put the stamp before the person goes to be tested while the secretary is thinking they are going to the testing room.
They go home or wherever they go and write that were tested and the result is negative when it is positive, and they sign any name.”
She said TCE has a register in which clients’ details are jotted down. “The register helps us to go through information and if we don’t have the signed name (in the health passport of the suspicious person) then we know that something is wrong,” said Shikalepo. She added that the health facilities have similar registers where they fill in the client’s details.
Amongst other things, TCE testers use codes in the health passports of those who have been tested by workers. The codes are created by the organisation and are difficult to forge, Shikalepo noted.
“If the client tries their luck by trying to use a code and it does not correlate with what is in the book we will know that the information in the client’s card has been forged,” said Shikalepo.
Another intervention to fight people who forge HIV results, Shikalepo said, is that people are first tested and then the counsellor refers them to get a stamp at the clinic. “In general this practice (forging) happens at different health facilities,” said Shikalepo.