The initiative, originally named HIV in Europe, began in 2007 as way to bring attention to the importance of earlier diagnosis and care for people living with HIV. Although the initiative started with a HIV focus, the growing evidence has shown that HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C share overlaps in the modes of transmission and affect common key populations therefore, the initiative made a concerted effort in 2013 to also prioritise hepatitis. Since its initiation, HIV in Europe has built a European platform where independent experts from civil society, policy institutions, health care and European public health institutions to work toward influencing policy, knowledge sharing and building the evidence-base to support earlier diagnosis and care of HIV and viral hepatitis across Europe.

On 28 January 2019, the initiative was officially renamed as EuroTEST with the intention of broadening the disease scope of the initiative to address hepatitis, HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and tuberculosis (TB).  EuroTEST aims to utilise integrated strategies to help increase early detection and earlier entry into treatment leading to better health outcomes and preventing the risk of further transmission.

The initiative has proven to be able to put the issue of earlier diagnosis of HIV and viral hepatitis on the political agenda while involving different constituencies and will continue to do so additionally for STIs and TB. The initiative has also been able to initiate specific projects to enhance optimal testing and care, including the projects OptTEST and European Testing Week.

Overall Objective

The overall objective of EuroTEST is to ensure that people living with HIV, viral hepatitis, STIs or TB have access to testing and enter care earlier in the course of their infection than is currently the case, as well as to study the decrease in the proportion presenting late for care.