Retention and linkage to care

Retention and linkage to care features

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  Point-of-care (POC) diagnostics are essential to achieving an AIDS-free generation and improving outcomes in HIV-exposed children

  This edition reviews recent evidence on point-of-care testing, on tests in development, and looks at experience of optimising performance of dried blood spot sampling....

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  The bottom line in clinical care: The new BHIVA standards

  Gus Cairns summarises this important new document. ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Changing the way HIV prevention is delivered – a roadmap

  In the last few years there has been a wealth of dramatic data on the efficacy of new HIV prevention methods, including male circumcision, pre-exposure prophylaxis and...

  From:  News

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  Adherence and retention in HIV care in resource-limited settings

  Recent research on adherence to HIV treatment and retention in HIV care in resource-limited settings....

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Lost to care: the mystery of the disappearing patients

  Up to a third of patients who attend their first HIV clinic appointment don’t return. Why do they drop out of care, and are they putting themselves...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  A follow-up on follow-up: shifting to a community-based response to improve retention in care

  Further discussion on issues relating to retention in HIV care in low-income settings, with a focus on community-based care and task-shifting as potential solutions to...

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

Retention and linkage to care news from aidsmap

• Self-testing and home treatment initiation triples uptake of HIV treatment in Malawi

  Offering people the opportunity to self-test at home and then start antiretroviral therapy after counselling at home, together with home delivery of antiretroviral drugs, increased the number of people linked to care after testing and started on treatment almost ...

  11 hours ago | Keith Alcorn

• Are we underestimating the proportion of virally-suppressed patients in the US?

  Several presentations at the recent 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta suggest that previous estimates of the proportion of people with HIV in the USA who are on antiretroviral therapy (ART) and with an undetectable viral ...

  15 March 2013 | Gus Cairns

• Earlier treatment in South African cohort did not increase loss to follow-up

  Implementation of South Africa’s 2011 expansion of treatment guidelines – starting antiretroviral therapy (ART) at or below 350 cells/mm3 – will not increase patient loss to follow-up, researchers report in this first study from a routine clinical setting published in ...

  21 February 2013 | Carole Leach-Lemens

• AIDS-defining illnesses, especially TB, more frequent at high CD4 counts in Africa and Asia

  Rates of death and illness remained 'substantial' even at higher CD4 cell counts among people receiving antiretroviral therapy in lower-income settings, and much greater efforts to get people onto treatment earlier will be needed to reduce this burden in people ...

  07 February 2013 | Carole Leach-Lemens

• Support needed to prevent missed clinic visits becoming long-term disengagement from care

  Missed clinic visits may be unintentional or intentional, with complex reasons that change over time, according to qualitative research conducted with people with HIV in three African countries and published in PLOS Medicine. While the initial, practical reasons for ...

  28 January 2013 | Roger Pebody

• Even in well-treated populations, loss to follow-up limits community viral suppression

  Several papers presented at the Eleventh International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection last week showed that even in populations with consistent access to care and antiretroviral therapy (ART), high rates of loss to follow-up mean that it ...

  23 November 2012 | Gus Cairns

• Life expectancy in older people with HIV could exceed the average – as long as ART keeps working

  The latest forecasts of life expectancy in people with HIV in the UK, based on mortality data from the UK Collaborative HIV Cohort (UK CHIC) study, show that the average life expectancy of people on antiretroviral therapy (ART) with ...

  19 November 2012 | Gus Cairns

• Huge differences in HIV mortality rates in US according to race, social and economic status

  New US research has revealed enormous differences in HIV mortality rates between patients according to their race and social and economic status. Published in the online edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the study showed that mortality rates ...

  19 October 2012 | Michael Carter

• US youth, heterosexual men and African Americans losing out on HIV treatment benefits

  A new study presented at the 19th International AIDS Conference shows that young people, African Americans, and heterosexual men have particularly low rates of retention in care and viral suppression and that there are also inequalities between cities. A previous study published ...

  08 August 2012 | Gus Cairns

• Changing the way HIV prevention is delivered – a roadmap

  In the last few years there has been a wealth of dramatic data on the efficacy of new HIV prevention methods, including male circumcision, pre-exposure prophylaxis and treatment as prevention. While last week’s 19th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) ...

  01 August 2012 | Roger Pebody

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Retention and linkage to care news selected from other sources

• Behind the miracle child a broken system lurks

  While we celebrate this week’s story of an HIV-miracle cure, let’s not forget the story of injustice that made it possible. How is it possible for a pregnant woman in the world’s wealthiest country to not receive prenatal care? Why were the mother and child “lost to care” for over 6 months?

  07 March 2013 | AIDS Foundation of Chicago

• Falling Through the Cracks

  We can strengthen two of the weakest links in the U.S. health care chain for people with HIV/AIDS—linking people to care and retaining them in care—but doing so requires a collective approach.

  05 March 2013 | Poz

• The HIV treatment cascade – patching the leaks to improve HIV prevention

  The concept of an HIV treatment cascade has emerged as a way to identify gaps in the continuum, which are preventing people from realizing the treatment and prevention benefits of antiretroviral therapy.

  20 February 2013 | CATIE Prevention in Focus

• Only 1 in 5 Medicaid Users Linked to Care Within a Year After HIV Diagnosis

  Only about 20% of adult Medicaid recipients who tested positive for HIV during the past decade began receiving appropriate care – including CD4 T-cell count and viral load monitoring – within a year of diagnosis, and the rate did not improve much within 5 years, according to an analysis described in the January 2013 issue of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

  07 February 2013 | HIVandHepatitis.com

• Ward Cates: Cascade Helps Keep People Coming Back for HIV Treatment

  A recent model known as the HIV treatment cascade helps identify the key opportunities to improve services to stop the spread of HIV. Getting into the treatment cascade begins with HIV testing, because knowing whether one is infected or not determines the next course of action.

  28 November 2012 | Huffington Post

• UGANDA: Sex workers missing out on HIV care

  Sex workers in Uganda's capital, Kampala, are reluctant to seek HIV testing and treatment services, putting their health in jeopardy, preliminary results of a new study reveal.

  15 November 2012 | IRIN Plus News

• Cambodia: Lack of home-based care in Ratanakiri causing problems for people living with HIV

  People living with HIV in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia are unable to access home-based care in their area which is making it hard for them to stay healthy, an official has said.

  25 October 2012 | Key Correspondents

• Tanzania: Campaign on to resume treatment of HIV/Aids

  The American Ambassador to Tanzania will tomorrow launch an initiative to bring back treatment to all the people living with HIV (PLHIV) who were registered in various care and treatment clinics (CTC) but have abandoned the treatment.

  24 September 2012 | IPPmedia

• Drug Adherence And Treatment Improved By Specialized HIV Community Pharmacies

  Community pharmacies with specially trained staff to provide HIV services can help HIV-infected individuals be more compliant with their essential antiviral drug regimens and hence improve patient outcomes. Users of HIV-specialized Walgreen pharmacies across the U.S. had significantly greater adherence to and persistence with their therapeutic drug regimens, according to a study published in AIDS Patient Care and STDs,

  16 August 2012 | Medical News Today

• Entry, Retention and Treatment Success Rates Vary in Four U.S. Cities

  Data from four large cities – San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago – highlight discrepancies in progress towards universal HIV care and help identify cities where interventions may be successfully promoting access to care and treatment.

  27 July 2012 | POZ

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