David* is perched on a stool, staring at the table in front of him. On it, a small testing stick stands in a cylinder of liquid. “I’ve never tested before, so I thought I should,” he says.

David is sitting in a blue tent, in the middle of a busy shopping centre in Johannesburg. A kitchen timer, tied to the side of the tent, shows there are five more minutes to go. Soon, either one or two lines will appear. Two lines would indicate he may be HIV-positive, one that he is virus free.

There is no clinician present because David is using a self-screening kit. It takes 20 minutes, requires only an oral sample and is more than 90% accurate at identifying an HIV-positive result. Experts hope it could transform testing for the virus, increasing the number of people who know their status. Screening yourself for HIV, it is predicted, will become as normal as a doing a pregnancy test.

As David waits, Mokgadi Mabuela, a counsellor, is handing kits to passersby amid the lunchtime rush in Hillbrow, a deprived and bustling area of the city. “You can either do it here [in a private tent] or take the test home,” she tells a group of men. “Inside [the kit], you find your stand [for the cylinder of liquid], the liquid and testing pen.”

The testing pen has to be swiped across the gums and left in the liquid, she explains.

“Usually we give out 300 kits in one day,” says Mabuela. David, who is 33 and from Zimbabwe, is exactly the kind of person counsellors want to reach. “It hadn’t come into my mind [to get tested],” he says, adding that his girlfriend, who is younger, had a test that came back negative after she recently fell pregnant.

It is not uncommon for Mabuela to encounter people taking their first test. Often, they suspect they are positive but don’t feel ready to find out, she says. “They are just scared to know. It’s just the thing of knowing you could be positive that’s quite scary,” she says. “Especially in a place like Hillbrow where you have your brothels, strip clubs and everything. The discrimination that comes with having HIV is still a huge thing.”

According to government figures, 86% of South Africans know their status. It is hoped self-testing could help the country reach the 90% target set by the UN. Read more via the Guardian