Background Recent years saw climbing cases of newly HIV infection among students attending universities in China. HIV self-testing (HIVST) has the potential to reach students who do not access facility-based services. We aimed to evaluate the effect of a program providing both online and offline HIVST for students attending universities in China.

Methods HIVST awareness campaigns were conducted in five universities between November 2017 and December 2018 in Luzhou, southwestern China’s Sichuan Province. Eligible participants were students attending the five participating universities who were willing to use HIVST. For online HIVST, participants were recruited via social media and provided with a HIVST kit through postal services. For offline HIVST, participants were recruited via campus promotion and provided with a HIVST on site. Participants self-tested their HIV status using a finger-prick HIVST kit with text and pictorial instructions. Testing results were uploaded to online recording system via mobile phones.

Results A total of 649 (122 online, 527 offline) HIVST kits were distributed, of which 490 testing results were returned (82 online and 408 offline). The success rate was high for both online and offline HIVST (91.5% vs 93.6%). All qualified HIVST results were HIV negative. Participants’ average age was 19.9 (range 16–29) years. Male students were more likely than their female counterparts to use HIVST (464 vs 26). The reasons for male students to test for HIV were unprotected virginal intercourse with a woman (114, 24.6%), unprotected anal intercourse with another man (55, 11.9%). The proportion of MSM in online testers were higher than that in offline testers (56.4% vs 43.6%).

Conclusion This study found high level of qualified results and feedback of HIVST among students attending universities in Luzhou, China. HIVST could be widely implemented to facilitate the HIV testing on campus. Further studies are needed assess the feasibility of its scaling up.

Disclosure No significant relationships.