HIV Testing in the Era of Treatment Scale Up

he ways in which global responses to HIV/AIDS have differed from responses to other infectious diseases have been extensively discussed in the literature.1,2 Bayer proposed the term to refer to the compromises reached early on in the epidemic between civil liberty proponents and the public health establishment, affecting policy and practice concerning surveillance, HIV testing, and contact investigation and tracing. The international response to HIV/AIDS was initially largely driven by experience and discussion in the United States the first and most heavily affected country in the industrialized world. The language of human rights was introduced into HIV/AIDS discourse somewhat later, when the World Health Organization's Special Programme on AIDS (later the Global Programme on AIDS) was being developed. AIDS exceptionalism and an emphasis on certain human rights aspects of HIV/AIDS became the international norm.