Prince Harry's live HIV test has had a pretty huge impact on HIV testing
LONDON -- Prince Harry's live streamed HIV test has prompted a surge in HIV self-testing, a HIV charity has revealed.
Prince Harry took a HIV test live on Facebook on July 14 to show how easy it is. It was hailed by campaigners as a "groundbreaking moment in the fight against HIV."
HIV awareness group the Terrence Higgins Trust has reported a five-fold increase in the number of orders of HIV self-tests since the prince's broadcast.
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Prince Harry's live stream -- which showed him taking a rapid HIV test at a sexual health clinic in London -- gained over 2 million views.
According to the charity, a pilot scheme offering people the chance to find out their HIV status in their own home for free had received a steady level of orders prior to the prince's broadcast. However, orders for home test kits increased five-fold to 150 orders per day on the day of Prince Harry's live test.
BioSure HIV self tests allow people to find out their HIV status in the privacy of their own homes. Just like Prince Harry's rapid HIV test, the test requires a small drop of blood and can give you a 99.7% accurate result within 15 minutes.
“We know that one in six people living with HIV do not know that they have it. Testing puts you in control and, thanks to treatment, will stop you from getting seriously ill, enable you to live a normal lifespan and prevent you from passing the virus on to anyone else," Dr. Michael Brady, medical director for Terrence Higgins Trust, said in a statement.
“That’s why it’s so important that we continue looking for new ways to make HIV testing more accessible to those most at risk, and why it’s fantastic to see the very tangible and immediate impact of Prince Harry’s support for HIV testing.”
The pilot -- which has now closed -- sent out 4,750 HIV self-tests to people across the UK. Half of people who received tests got in touch with the charity to share their results, with 26 people reporting a positive test result.
Topics Health Social Good
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
