Accelerating HIV and AIDS services delivery in Kigoma region, Tanzania.

Abstract

Tanzania Commission for AIDS and UNAIDS reports 1.7 million Tanzanians are HIV-positive. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS set 95%, 95% 95% targets to be achieved by 2025. An assessment was done to understand the region's position, which found the underperformance of critical HIV and AIDS indicators. This prompted the region to accelerate HIV interventions by providing frontline healthcare providers with skills and knowledge, essential equipment, and other infrastructure, after which the assessment of the indicators was conducted to document the outcome of interventions. we conducted a descriptive study in Kigoma region in June 2022 by comparing HIV and AIDS indicators performance in the pre-intervention and post interventions arms. High-volume CTCs were purposefully selected. We used a pre-tested checklist to assess new HIV-positive on antiretroviral (ARV), pregnant women living with HIV on ARV, and people living with HIV offered multi-month dispensing. We further assessed HIV viral load (HVL) specimen collection, HIV suppression status, and HVL test results turnaround time. We cleaned the information using an MS Excel sheet and tabulated results using STATA software version 13. we assessed 27 care and clinics. The proportion gain in the index client elicitation was 13%. Sexual partners mentioned during index client elicitation had an increase of 145 individuals. The yield among consented sexual partners gained by 14%. The ARV initiation among new HIV -positive and pregnant women living with HIV gained a proportion of 2%. Multi-month dispencing was found to have an 8% increase. The turnaround time for HVL test results decreased by 21 days, and the viral load suppression status increased by 4%. the assessment demonstrated the accelerated HIV and AIDS service delivery due to implementing a comprehensive package of HIV and AIDS management. We recommend in-service capacity building regarding training, basic equipment, and infrastructure.