Increasing HIV Testing Among Sexual and Gender Expansive Men in Kazakhstan: A Stepped-Wedge Randomized Trial of a Community-Level Intervention.

Importance: HIV transmission in Kazakhstan has increased among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender and nonbinary people who have sex with men (TSM), driven by low HIV testing rates.

Objective: To determine if the intervention had a community effect of increasing HIV testing among MSM and TSM in Kazakhstan.

Design: We employed a stepped-wedge, cluster-randomized controlled trial with MSM and TSM community members recruited from three cities in Kazakhstan: Almaty, Astana, and Shymkent.

Scaling Up HIV Self-Testing and Linkage to Care Among Women Who Exchange Sex and/or Use Drugs in Kazakhstan.

HIV testing is the point of entry for linkage to treatment and prevention and is critically important to ending the HIV epidemic. HIV self-testing (HST) is an acceptable, user-controlled tool that can address testing barriers, which is especially important for populations who need to test frequently, like women who exchange or trade sex for money or other needed resources (WES) and women who use drugs. HST is feasible and acceptable among WES, but research among WES who also use drugs is limited, particularly in places like Kazakhstan, where HIV rates remain high and where scale-up of HST and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is in process.

Effectiveness of an Intervention to Improve HIV Service Delivery for People Who Inject Drugs in Kazakhstan: A Cluster Trial.

Importance: The increasing HIV incidence rates and suboptimal rates of testing, engagement, and retention in care for people who inject drugs (PWID) in Kazakhstan underscore the need for effective HIV care continuum interventions for PWID.

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of the Bridge HIV care continuum intervention implemented in needle and syringe programs (NSPs) in Kazakhstan.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This stepped-wedge cluster trial was conducted from February 2017 to May 2020, with implementation beginning sequentially across 3 cities (Almaty, Karaganda-Temirtau, and Shymkent) in August 2017, January 2018, and May 2019.

A cluster-randomized controlled trial of a combination HIV risk reduction and microfinance intervention for female sex workers who use drugs in Kazakhstan.

Introduction: Female sex workers (FSW) who use drugs are a key population at risk of HIV in Kazakhstan, and face multiple structural barriers to HIV prevention. More research is needed on the role of structural interventions such as microfinance (MF) in reducing HIV risk. This paper describes the results of a cluster-randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a combination HIVRR + MF intervention in reducing biologically confirmed STIs and HIV risk behaviours.

Implementation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in former Soviet Union countries.

Against the current global trends, in the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries HIV prevalence is on the rise. Visa-free movement across borders has facilitated migrant-associated HIV transmission within this region. Despite efforts from the governments to curtail the growing epidemic, there is still a serious need for the development of strategies that focus on high-risk behaviors and practices responsible for the continued transmission of HIV in this region.

Study of the possibility of introduction of Kazakhstan NGO-based rapid HIV testing procedures.

Introduction: New initiatives presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS , such as 90-90-90, test and treat, preventive treatment, and best international practices related to the introduction of rapid human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing in clinics, and field conditions, including self-testing, predetermined the introduction of NGO-based rapid HIV testing in the Republic of Kazakhstan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This work presents the results of a comprehensive study conducted about the possible introduction of NGO-based rapid HIV testing in the country. It should be noted that 32,573 HIV infections have been diagnosed in Kazakhstan (prevalence of 117.

Improving HIV service delivery for people who inject drugs in Kazakhstan: study protocol for the Bridge stepped-wedge trial.

Background: People who inject drugs (PWID) in Kazakhstan face many barriers to HIV testing as well as to accessing HIV care, to retention in HIV care, and to initiating and adhering to anti-retroviral treatment (ART). Needle and syringe programs (NSPs) are an opportune setting for integrated interventions to link PWID to HIV care.

Methods: This Hybrid Type II study employs a stepped-wedge design to evaluate both effectiveness and implementation outcomes of Bridge, an intervention to identify, test, and link HIV-positive PWID to HIV care.

Comparison of influenza outbreaks in the Republic of Kazakhstan and Russia induced by 2009 yearly new variant of A(H1N1) influenza virus.

The aim of the work is the comparison of the epidemiology of influenza and acute respiratory virus infections (ARVI) in the Republic of Kazakhstan with the corresponding influenza epidemic in Russia induced by influenza pandemic virus A/California/07/2009 in 2009. Data on influenza and ARVI from the Republic of Kazakhstan and Federal Center of influenza was collected and investigated over the course of several weeks from hospitalized patients with the same diagnosis among all population and in age groups on 16 territories of Kazakhstan and in 49 major cities of Russia. The epidemic in Kazakhstan resembled the Russian epidemic in terms of its abnormally early beginning, expression of monoaetiology, the spread of the epidemic into all territories and start of the epidemics among adult population.