7th International AIDS Conference Florence, Italy — June 16-21, 1991

Int Conf AIDS 1991 Jun 16-21; 7:453 (abstract no. W.D.4263)
Colaiacomo M, Alba L, Boumis E, De Carli G, Girardi E, Grisetti S, Lo Presti E, Nurra G, Puro V, Schito S, et al; AIDS Unit RM/10 at L. Spallanzani Hospital, Rome Italy

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of an AIDS information campaign on public awareness of the risk of HIV infection and on its efficacy in leading to detect infected people.

METHODS: Italian Ministry of Health started on April 22, 1990 a new multimedia information campaign on AIDS, focusing on heterosexual risk. No message on HIV testing was included. All subjects attending our HIV counseling and testing service are asked to provide demografic data and reasons for seeking the test. Only subjects who had no previous test or who tested negative in the past are considered in the analysis.

RESULTS: A 63% increase in the requests was observed in the six months following the start of the campaign, compared to the preceding 12 (199 vs 124/month). Main reasons reported for seeking a test during the campaign were: high number/occasional heterosexual partners (25%), previous or current intravenous drug use (15%), heterosexual intercourse with HIV-infected people (13%) or with drug addicts (5%), pregnancy (7%) and homo-bisexuality (4%). No differences were observed in comparison to the pre-campaign period. The mean number of people testing positive each month remained constant, thus producing a decreasing rate of seropositivity (4.4% vs 7.6%).

CONCLUSIONS: Our data may indicate that the campaign did lead to an increase in public awareness of the risk of AIDS and suggest that monitoring of HIV counseling and testing can be a useful tool in the evaluation of the impact of an information campaign. Although a higher number of new seropositives was not identified, the increased number of requests for testing provides an extremely important opportunity for a wider and individual counseling for people believing themselves to be at risk for HIV infection.

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