Lilongwe — The Malawi Interfaith Aids Association (MIAA) has asked government to speed up the process of delivering HIV testing Kits to Districts as the demand for testing is very high.

Program Officer responsible for Monitoring and Evaluation for MIAA, Pilira Ndaferankhande made the call ahead of the Annual Solidarity HIV/AIDS Prayers to take place in Mangochi on 2 August, 2013.

She said people in the districts now have the hunger to get tested, but they are demotivated when they are sent back home from testing centres because of lack of testing kits.

"Government introduced this program of directly delivering testing kits to districts, but the problem has been the late delivery of the kits to the testing centres which forces people to go back home without getting tested," said Ndaferankhande.

MIAA is also advocating for medical male circumcision, abstinence and testing among the youths in the country to help scale down the further spread of HIV.

She said: "We are encouraging young men to go for medical male circumcision, and encourage initiation camps to send the youths to the hospital for medical circumcision, getting tested and abstinence among the Christian youths.

"Whether one is a virgin or circumcised, we still urge them to get tested. Those circumcised we also ask them to get tested and abstain if possible till they get married because getting circumcised is not the prevention of contracting HIV," said Ndaferankhande.

The program officer explained that the annual solidarity prayers is an event where the faith community gathers together to pray for those who are suffering from the disease, repentance of sins and thanksgiving for the introduction of new anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).

The theme for this year's Annual Solidarity HIV/AIDS prayers is "Faith Community Response in Scaling Up and Consolidating Comprehensive Evidence Based HIV Prevention, towards Zero New HIV Infections".

The event is expected to cost about K1.3 million.