Community-based intervention to increase HIV testing and case detection in people aged 16-32 years in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Thailand (NIMH Project Accept, HPTN 043): a randomised study
Abstract
In developing countries, most people infected with HIV do not know their infection status. We aimed to assess whether HIV testing could be increased by combination of community mobilisation, mobile community-based voluntary counselling and testing (VCT), and support after testing.
Project Accept is underway in ten communities in Tanzania, eight in Zimbabwe, and 14 in Thailand. Communities at each site were paired according to similar demographic and environmental characteristics, and one community from each pair was randomly assigned to receive standard clinic-based VCT (SVCT), and the other community was assigned to receive community-based VCT (CBVCT) plus access to SVCT.
Randomisation and assignment of communities to intervention groups was done by the statistics centre by computer; no one was masked to treatment assignment because the interventions were community based. Intervention was provided for about 3 years (2006-09).