Improving Clinic Attendance for Medication Collection Among HIV Positive Individuals in Nepal

Summary

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been a game changer in the context of HIV-epidemic. From 2005 to 2015, HIV-related deaths have fallen by 45% thanks to ART. However, ART's success heavily depends on HIV-positive individuals' high adherence to it. This includes clinic attendance for various purposes. It is necessary among HIV-positive individuals for their antiretroviral (ARV) pills pick up, monitoring of their treatment outcomes, and treatment of their opportunistic infections. Among them, ARV pills pick up is the major reason for the ART clinic attendance. Improving clinic attendance for pills pick up remains one of the key challenges to ART programs. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends more than 90% on-time ARV pills pick up as per the early warning indicators of HIV-drug resistance. Among six Asian countries, none of the 1048 clinics under the study could meet the WHO target. Among HIV-positive individuals, clinic attendance for pills pick can be improved by using mobile phones. Those who receive mobile phone reminders are two times more likely to attend their clinics regularly than those who did not receive such reminders. Nepal belongs to a low-income country and is facing a similar problem, too. In 2015, approximately 39,000 people were estimated to be living with HIV and ART coverage was limited to only 31.5%. In the same year, only 32% of the HIV-positive individuals attended their clinics regularly for ARV pills pick up. Like other countries, one of the potential strategies is to use mobile phones effectively in Nepal. Mobile phones have been very widely used in Nepal. In 2016, Nepal had 27.9 million mobile phone users, against the population of 26.5 million. Under such a context, mobile phone reminders can be effective to improve clinic attendance among HIV-positive individuals. However, the effectiveness of such interventions barely remains examined by using a randomized controlled trial. This study evaluates the effectiveness of mobile phone reminder intervention on improving clinic attendance for ARV pills pick up and medication adherence among HIV-positive individuals on ART following the implementation of test and treat strategy in Nepal.

Conditions

• HIV Infections
• Antiretroviral Therapy
• HIV Seropositivity

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Mobile phone reminder

Intervention described already in arm/group descriptions.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Asian Development Bank Japan Scholarship Program

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Open Society Institute

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Tokyo University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Masamine Jimba, PhD, MD, MPH · Tokyo University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-10-14

Primary Completion

2018-06-30

Completion

2018-06-30

Countries

• Nepal

Study Locations