Interventions for reaching men to improve HIV Testing Services in sub-Saharan Africa: A narrative review

African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Interventions for reaching men to improve HIV Testing Services in sub-Saharan Africa: A narrative review
 
Creator Matonyane, Lebogang G. Ross, Andrew Qolesa, Sandra Sibeko, Zandile
 
Subject Family Medicine; Primary health care intervention; reaching; men; HTS; treatment uptake
Description Background: The HIV Testing Services (HTS) are a vital component of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention initiatives, and the essential first step to healthcare. Men in South Africa have been shown to test for HIV at a lower rate than women, with a resulting higher mortality rate.Aim: This narrative review aimed to describe the approaches used to improve the uptake of HTS by men both at the facility and community level in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).Method: Online databases were used to search for relevant studies published from 2019 to 2024 in English. A total of 475 records were identified, with 426 being included after duplicates were removed. After reviewing the abstracts, only 13 studies were included in the review.Results: This findings revealed three themes and seven sub-themes related to improving HTS uptake: improved access to testing (HIV self-testing, community-based testing and workplace testing), motivation and support (stakeholder involvement and creating a demand for testing) and health facility services (facility-based testing and services provided by male healthcare workers).Conclusion: The limited number of studies highlights the need for more research into developing and testing interventions to encourage men to utilise HTS. A multipronged approach that includes various role-players can be beneficial. This needs to be supported by continuous demand creation utilising platforms such as social media, radio and local newspapers.Contribution: The study collates the interventions intended to encourage men to undertake HTS in SSA.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor University of Kwazulu-Natal
Date 2025-06-25
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Narrative Review
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/phcfm.v17i1.4869
 
Source African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine; Vol 17, No 1 (2025); 13 pages 2071-2936 2071-2928
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4869/8370 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4869/8371 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4869/8372 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4869/8373
 
Coverage South Afrcia; Durban 2019 - 2024 None
Rights Copyright (c) 2025 Lebogang G. Matonyane, Andrew Ross, Sandra Qolesa, Zandile Sibeko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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