IDSE, 24 April 2014
A combination of social, behavioral, and structural HIV-prevention interventions has proved effective at increasing screening and reducing the number of newly diagnosed infections among high-risk populations in Africa and Southeast Asia, a new study has confirmed.
The so-called Project Accept trial, part of the HIV Prevention Trials Network and supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and Office of AIDS Research, assessed the efficacy of programs such as mobile testing for HIV and post-test support services in 34 communities in South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe and in 14 communities in Thailand. Communities were matched into pairs based on sociodemographic, cultural, and infrastructure characteristics, with 1 community randomly assigned to the intervention and 1 serving as a control for comparison.
Project Accept was designed to increase access to voluntary counseling, testing, and disease management and counseling services in high-risk areas. The initiative also strived to change attitudes regarding HIV awareness and HIV status, and to remove barriers to the implementation of screening and support services within these communities. Study participants who learned they were infected with HIV were directed to counseling programs and referred to health and social services assistance. Those who tested negative also were directed to counseling and support programs designed to help ensure they remained uninfected.
"The study clearly demonstrates that high rates of testing can be achieved by going into communities and that this strategy can result in increased HIV detection, which makes referral to care possible," Thomas J. Coates, PhD, Project Accept's principal investigator and director of the Center for World Health at UCLA, said in a statement released by the university. Dr. Coates is also associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute, a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. "This has major public health benefit implications, not only suggesting how to link infected individuals to care, but also encouraging testing in entire communities and therefore also reducing further HIV transmission," Dr. Coates said.
Source: IDSE
