Centro Comunitário +Abraço Braga is a walk-in testing centre run by Abraço, the Portuguese association that has worked on HIV since the late 1980s. It sits between the Arco da Porta Nova and the train station, a few minutes from the cathedral.
Rapid tests for HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B and C are free of charge, anonymous and confidential, and the result comes back in about twenty-five minutes. A team of psychologists, nurses and peer educators does the counselling before and after the test, answers questions about sexually transmitted infections and about sex in general, and hands out a prevention kit of condoms and lubricant.
The centre opened in late 2019 as a joint project with the Portuguese health ministry, with support from Braga city council. Abraço runs comparable centres in Lisbon, Porto and Aveiro.
The people in this picture are AI-generated.
