Malaysian researchers launch new AIDS test kit

The seventh generation HV-7 kit is expected to be available in local hospitals by early 2005, and could be sold in pharmacies in future.

Malaysian researchers said Wednesday they have developed the world's fastest home test kit for the HIV virus.

The seventh generation HV-7 kit is expected to be available in local hospitals by early 2005, and could be sold in pharmacies in the future, said the TH Koid Foundation, which developed the kit.

"This self-contained, single use test kit is clinically proven to be reliable, accurate, user-friendly, and delivers a 99.8 percent accurate result within three to five minutes," Yvonne Oh, spokeswoman for TH Koid Foundation told AFP.

"All you have to do is tear open the pre-sterilised handi-pack, clean your finger with the alcohol swab, prick your finger using the lancet, and place a drop of blood into the sample well," she said.

Within minutes, the HV-7 should be able to screen for the presence of HIV antibodies 1 and 2 in the user's blood, she said.

Much like a home pregnancy kit, a two-line result would indicate you were HIV-positive, while a single line would prove negative for HIV.

The kit has been tested by Malaysia's Institute for Medical Research, Singapore's Tan Tock Seng Hospital and four local hospitals, she said.

By the end of last year, 58,012 HIV cases had been reported in Malaysia, Health Minister Chua Soi Lek said earlier this week. A total of 6,545 of them have died.

"There are 20 new cases every day with three AIDS cases and two deaths daily," he said.

The president of the Malaysian AIDS Council, Marina Mahathir, said in her column in the Star newspaper Wednesday that the country had missed its chance to prevent the spread of AIDS.

"Ten years ago, if we had put in place programmes that prevented HIV transmission among drug users, we could have contained the epidemic," she wrote.

"In the early days, we actually had very frank posters that talked about unsafe sex and the need to use condoms," she said.

"Someone somewhere must have turned white at the sight of these and then they were gone."