Study Examines Treatment Retention Among HIV Patients In Uganda

The Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog reports on a study, released this week by Clinical Infectious Diseases, that “follow[ed] patients in two Ugandan HIV care centers (one rural, one urban), [and] found not only were retention rates high for patients still considered too healthy to be eligible for medicine under guidelines of the last few years, but concluded those retention rates may be ‘systematically underestimated in many other settings.'” According to the blog, “The findings carry weight against a long unchallenged perception that people who feel well drop out of treatment, the resulting conclusion that patients receiving medicine before they have begun to feel ill can’t be counted on to continue to take it, and the specter that is then raised — that early treatment could lead to widespread drug resistance” (Barton, 8/7).

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