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A strategy of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole prophylaxis and antiretroviral therapy, with the use of clinical criteria alone or in combination with CD4 testing to guide the timing of treatment, is an economically attractive health investment in settings with limited resources.

The delivery of HIV care in the initial rapid scale-up of HIV care and treatment was based on existing clinic-based models, which are common in highly resourced settings and largely undifferentiated for individual needs. A new framework for treatment based on variable intensities of care tailored to the specific needs of different groups of individuals across the cascade of care is proposed here. Service intensity is characterised by four delivery components: (i) types of services delivered, (ii) location of service delivery, (iii) provider of health services and (iv) frequency of health services. How these components are developed into a service delivery framework will vary across countries and populations, with the intention being to improve acceptability and care outcomes. The goal of getting more people on treatment before they become ill will necessitate innovative models of delivering both testing and care. As HIV programmes expand treatment eligibility, many people entering care will not be ‘patients’ but healthy, active and productive members of society 1. To take the framework to scale, it will be important to: (i) define which individuals can be served by an alternative delivery framework; (ii) strengthen health systems that support decentralisation, integration and task shifting; (iii) make the supply chain more robust; and (iv) invest in data systems for patient tracking and for programme monitoring and evaluation.La délivrance des soins du VIH dans le déploiement initial rapide des soins et du traitement du VIH a été basée sur des modèles existants dans les cliniques, qui sont courants dans les régions bénéficiant d’importantes ressources et largement indifférenciées pour les besoins individuels. Un nouveau cadre est proposé ici pour le traitement basé selon les intensités variables de soins, adaptés aux besoins spécifiques des différents groupes de personnes à travers la cascade de soins. L’intensité des services est caractérisée par quatre éléments de délivrance: (1) les types de services délivrés, (2) l’emplacement de la délivrance des services, (3) Les prestataires des services de santé et (4) la fréquence des services de santé. La façon dont ces éléments sont développés dans un cadre de prestation de services peut varier selon les pays et les populations, l’intention étant d’améliorer les résultats d’acceptabilité et des soins. Le but d’obtenir plus de personnes sous traitement avant qu’ils ne tombent malades nécessitera des modèles innovateurs de prestation à la fois pour dépistage et pour les soins. Comme les programmes VIH étendent l’éligibilité au traitement, beaucoup de gens qui entrent dans les soins ne seront pas des “malades- mais des éléments sains de la société, actifs et productifs. Afin de tenir le cadre à l’échelle, il sera important de: (1) définir les individus qui peuvent être traités par un cadre alternatif de prestation, (2) renforcer les systèmes de santé qui soutiennent la décentralisation, l’intégration et le transfert des tâches; (3) rendre la chaîne d’approvisionnement plu...

: CD4 cell count declines were dependent on CD4 strata and can inform timing of clinic visits and treatment initiation in South Africa. Incidence rates of OIs suggest that targeted OI prophylaxis could prevent substantial HIV-related morbidity in South Africa.

Cumulative results from 3 years of follow-up suggest that a regimen of TDF/FTC and EFV demonstrates superior durability of viral load suppression and an improved safety and morphologic profile compared with ZDV/3TC and EFV.

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Context The effect of global health initiatives on population health is uncertain. Between 2003 and 2008, the US Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the largest initiative ever devoted to a single disease, operated intensively in twelve African focus countries. The initiative's impact on all-cause adult mortality is unknown. Objective To determine whether PEPFAR was associated with relative changes in adult mortality in the countries and districts where it operated most intensively. Design, Settings, and Patients Using person-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, we conducted cross-country and within-country analyses of adult mortality (annual probability of death per 1,000 adults between 15 and 59 years old) and PEPFAR's activities. Across countries, we compared adult mortality in nine focus countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) with eighteen non-focus African countries from 1998 to 2008. We performed sub-national analyses using information on PEPFAR's programmatic intensity in Tanzania and Rwanda. We employed difference-in-difference analyses with fixed effects for countries and years as well as personal and time-varying area characteristics. Main Outcome Measure Adult mortality. Results We analyzed information on 1,538,612 adults, including 60,303 deaths, from 41 surveys in 27 countries, 9 of them focus countries. In 2003, age-adjusted adult mortality was 8.3 per 1,000 adults in the focus countries (95% CI 8.0–8.6) and 8.5 per 1,000 adults (95% CI 8.3–8.7) in the non-focus countries. In 2008, mortality was 4.1 per 1,000 (95% CI 3.6–4.6) in the focus countries, and 6.9 per 1,000 (95% CI 6.3–7.5) in the non-focus countries. We estimate that the odds ratio of mortality among adults living in focus countries compared with non-focus between 2004 and 2008 was 0.84 (95% CI 0.72–0.99, p=0.03). Within Tanzania, the odds ratio of mortality for adults living in districts where PEPFAR operated more intensively was 0.83 (95% CI 0.72–0.97, p=0.02) compared with districts where it operated less intensively.. Conclusions Between 2004 and 2008, all-cause adult mortality declined more in PEPFAR focus countries relative to non-focus countries. It was not possible to determine whether PEPFAR was associated with mortality effects separate from reductions in HIV-specific deaths. These findings could inform decisions about resource allocation for future development assistance programs.

There are inefficiencies in current approaches to monitoring patients on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa. Patients typically attend clinics every 1–3 months for clinical assessment, with clinic costs being comparable with costs of drugs themselves, CD4 counts are measured every 6 months, yet patients are rarely switched to second-line therapies. To ensure sustainability of treatment programmes a transition to more cost-effective ART deliver is needed. In contrast to the CD4 count, measurement of the level of HIV RNA in plasma (“viral load”) provides a direct measure of current treatment effect. Viral load informed differentiated care is a means of tailoring care whereby those with suppressed viral load have less frequent clinical visits and attention is paid to those with unsuppressed viral load to promote adherence and timely switching to a second-line regimen. The most feasible approach in many countries to measure viral load is by collecting dried blood spot (DBS) samples for testing in regional laboratories, although there have been concerns over the sensitivity/specificity of DBS to define treatment failure and the delay in receiving results. We use modelling to synthesize available evidence and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of viral load-informed differentiated care, account for limitations of DBS. We find that viral load-informed differentiated care using DBS is expected to be cost-effective and is recommended as the strategy for patient monitoring, although further empirical evidence as the approach is rolled out would be of value. We also explore the potential benefits of future availability of point-of-care (POC) viral load tests.