Could Circumcision of HIV-Positive Males Benefit Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision Programs in Africa? Mathematical Modeling Analysis.

Background: The epidemiological and programmatic implications of inclusivity of HIV-positive males in voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programs are uncertain. We modeled these implications using Zambia as an illustrative example.

Methods And Findings: We used the Age-Structured Mathematical (ASM) model to evaluate, over an intermediate horizon (2010-2025), the effectiveness (number of VMMCs needed to avert one HIV infection) of VMMC scale-up scenarios with varying proportions of HIV-positive males.

Investigating Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision Program Efficiency Gains through Subpopulation Prioritization: Insights from Application to Zambia.

Background: Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are scaling-up voluntary male medical circumcision (VMMC) as an HIV intervention. Emerging challenges in these programs call for increased focus on program efficiency (optimizing program impact while minimizing cost). A novel analytic approach was developed to determine how subpopulation prioritization can increase program efficiency using an illustrative application for Zambia.

Antiretroviral therapy in antenatal care to increase treatment initiation in HIV-infected pregnant women: a stepped-wedge evaluation.

Background: The objective of the study was to evaluate whether providing antiretroviral therapy (ART) integrated in antenatal care (ANC) clinics resulted in a greater proportion of treatment-eligible women initiating ART during pregnancy compared with the existing approach of referral to ART. ANALYSIS DESIGN AND METHODS: The evaluation used a stepped-wedge design and included all HIV-infected, ART-eligible pregnant women in eight public sector clinics in Lusaka district, Zambia. Main outcome indicators were the proportion of treatment-eligible pregnant women enrolling into HIV care within 60 days of HIV diagnosis, and of these, the proportion initiating ART during pregnancy.

Adherence to first-line antiretroviral therapy affects non-virologic outcomes among patients on treatment for more than 12 months in Lusaka, Zambia.

Background: High-level adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) is associated with favourable patient outcomes. In resource-constrained settings, however, there are few validated measures. We examined the correlation between clinical outcomes and the medication possession ratio (MPR), a pharmacy-based measure of adherence.

Simple adherence assessments to predict virologic failure among HIV-infected adults with discordant immunologic and clinical responses to antiretroviral therapy.

We evaluated the association between two antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence measurements--the medication possession ratio (MPR) and patient self-report--and detectable HIV viremia in the setting of rapid service scale-up in Lusaka, Zambia. Drug adherence and outcomes were assessed in a subset of patients suspected of treatment failure based on discordant clinical and immunologic responses to ART. A total of 913 patients were included in this analysis, with a median time of 744 days (Q1, Q3: 511, 919 days) from ART initiation to viral load (VL) measurement.