Assisted Partner Services (APS) among Patients Attending HIV Comprehensive Care Clinic in Kenya: Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT)
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Date
2018
Authors
Kimani, Harun
Bukusi, David
Maingi, Peter
Macharia, Peter
Otieno, Felix A.
Muiruri, Peter
Farquhar, Carey
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Journal of Medical Science and Health Research
Abstract
Introduction: Assisted Partner Services (APS) for HIV involves interviewing HIV infected
individuals about their sexual partners and then locating these partners to offer HIV testing and
inform them about the exposure. Several studies have shown APS to be effective and acceptable
among newly diagnosed individuals, however few have studied APS among individuals with
chronic HIV infection.
Methods: HIV-infected individuals receiving care at Kenyatta National Hospital
Comprehensive Care Center (CCC) were randomized to community versus health facility based
notification. Index case in the Health facility arm were offered standard of care which is contract
testing where they were encouraged to bring their partners for testing. In the community arm
which was the intervention arm, the index cases were offered immediate assisted partner
notification where health advisers consented the index cases for their partners to be
confidentially contacted and tested for HIV. Smart phone tablet with a Open Data Kit
questionnaire was used to collect data. The two approaches were compared using the ODDS
Ratio with 95% confidence intervals and the results given below.
Results: Index cases randomized to health facility arm were 201 while 218 index cases in the
community arm of whom 262 (62.5%) were women and majority aged between 40-49 years 87 (39.9%). The community based assisted partner notification yielded 1 partner per index and
among these 113 partners were traced (51.8%) and 101 partners were HIV tested (89.3%). Of
those tested, 35 of 101 were HIV-positive. When compared to facility passive referral, there was
a 2.6-fold increase in partner testing with 58 (28.9%) of 201 testing for HIV in the health facility
arm (Odds ratio [OR] 2.65; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.77, 3.98 p<0.001).
Discussion or conclusion: Community based partner tracing has high potential of reaching HIV
exposed partners of a HIV infected index case. It is acceptable to both index cases and their
partners and enables health workers provide services that enable partners to be enrolled into care.
Description
A research article published in International Journal of Medical Science and Health Research
Keywords
Randomized trial, community, health facility, assisted partner services, HIV, Kenya
Citation
Kimani, H., Bukusi, D., Maingi, P., Macharia, P., Otieno, F. A., Muiruri, P., & Kimani, H. Assisted Partner Services (APS) among Patients Attending HIV Comprehensive Care Clinic in Kenya: Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).