Standerton - Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza will lead the provincial HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT) campaign by doing a public HIV test on Friday.
The provincial launch, which follows the national launch on Sunday by President Jacob Zuma, will offer testing to patients at the entry points in all health institutions.
Themed, "I am responsible", the campaign forms part of government's new and up-scaled HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment plan which hopes to get 15 million people tested by June 2011.
In Mpumalanga, the aim is to test 1.3 million people across the province.
Mpumalanga Department of Health and Social Development spokesperson Mpho Gabashane said Mabuza would officially launch the campaign at the Wilfred Mabuya community health centre in Standerton, where several senior officials from the provincial government were expected to take public HIV tests.
"We are launching in Standerton because the Lekwa local municipality has the highest HIV prevalence in the province and is situated in the Gert Sibande district, which has the fourth-highest HIV prevalence rate in the country, at 40.5 percent," Gabashane said.
Mpumalanga is the second-highest in terms of HIV prevalence in the country, after KwaZulu-Natal.
According to the 2008 National Antenatal Sentinel HIV and Syphilis Prevalence Survey, Mpumalanga is the only province that has shown an increase in the overall prevalence rate in the preceding three years, from 32.1 percent in 2006 and 34.6 percent in 2007 to 35.5 percent in 2008.
According to the survey, the latter percentage is the highest Mpumalanga has recorded since the start of the epidemic.
Provincial spokesperson of the Treatment Action Campaign Thandi Maluka said the TAC had started doing door-to-door visits to encourage people in the province to get tested on Friday.
"In Gert Sibande district, we are expecting at least 300 000 people to test on Friday. A high number of them will probably test HIV positive because of the high number of migrant labourers in that district.
"Another factor is that the district is mostly rural and many people are practicing polygamy," said Maluka.
She said another challenge in the district was that there were few NGOs involved in HIV-awareness programmes.
The launch in Standerton will start at 10am.
