Adugna Asmamaw, Azanaw Jember, Sharew Melaku Mequannent
Department of Health Education and Behavioral Sciences, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia.
HIV AIDS (Auckl). 2021 Dec 31;13:1159-1168. doi: 10.2147/HIV.S341012. eCollection 2021.
There is mounting evidence that the risk of death from COVID-19 among people with HIV could be as much as twice that of the general population. Recent evidence revealed that HIV services has been decreased by 75% and the problem is much more extensive in Ethiopia since most of the logistics for HIV services and fund donated by the good will of NGOs. Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on HIV services is a crucial first step to draw appropriate intervention. Thus, this study aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on HIV services in northwest Ethiopia.
An institution-based repeated cross-sectional study was conducted in Gondar city in August 2021. The DHIS-2 system, operated by FMOH contains data from all the nine health facilities for HIV care was used to extract data from the central repository. Excel data was exported to STATA 14 for analysis. We calculated indicators of HIV services, representing the 12 months pre-COVID 19 (2019) and 16 months during the COVID-19 period (2020 and 2021). ANOVA was used to detect the presence of significant mean differences between those periods. Assumptions of ANOVA was checked. The statistical significance was declared at 95% confidence interval (CI), p-value less than 0.05.
The mean difference was significant within HIV_VCT, HIV_PICT, ART between the years 2019 before COVID-19 and 2020 during COVID-19 (p-value < 0.05). HIV_VCT, ART variability was substantial between the years 2019 and 2021 (p-value < 0.05).
COVID-19 seriously affected all aspects of HIV service uptake such as HIV VCT, HIV PICT, ART, newly started ART, TB screening, and lost to ART follow-up. This study urges optimizing ART delivery mitigation with the ongoing COVID-19 in Ethiopia and beyond, in order to maintain progress toward HIV epidemic control.
越来越多的证据表明，感染艾滋病毒者死于新冠病毒的风险可能高达普通人群的两倍。最近的证据显示，艾滋病毒服务减少了75%，在埃塞俄比亚，这个问题更为严重，因为大多数艾滋病毒服务的后勤工作和资金是由非政府组织的善意捐赠提供的。了解新冠病毒对艾滋病毒服务的影响是采取适当干预措施的关键第一步。因此，本研究旨在评估新冠疫情对埃塞俄比亚西北部艾滋病毒服务的影响。
2021年8月在贡德尔市进行了一项基于机构的重复横断面研究。由联邦卫生部运营的DHIS-2系统包含来自所有九个艾滋病毒护理卫生机构的数据，用于从中央存储库中提取数据。将Excel数据导出到STATA 14进行分析。我们计算了艾滋病毒服务指标，分别代表新冠疫情前12个月（2019年）和新冠疫情期间16个月（2020年和2021年）的数据。采用方差分析来检测这些时期之间是否存在显著的均值差异。对方差分析的假设进行了检验。在95%置信区间（CI）、p值小于0.05时宣布具有统计学意义。
在新冠疫情前的2019年和新冠疫情期间的2020年之间，艾滋病毒自愿咨询检测（HIV_VCT）、艾滋病毒预防母婴传播（HIV_PICT）、抗逆转录病毒治疗（ART）方面的均值差异具有统计学意义（p值<0.05）。2019年至2021年期间，HIV_VCT和ART的变异性很大（p值<0.05）。
新冠病毒严重影响了艾滋病毒服务接受的各个方面，如艾滋病毒自愿咨询检测、艾滋病毒预防母婴传播、抗逆转录病毒治疗、新开始的抗逆转录病毒治疗、结核病筛查以及失访抗逆转录病毒治疗随访。本研究敦促在埃塞俄比亚及其他地区，随着新冠疫情的持续，优化抗逆转录病毒治疗的提供以减轻影响，以便在控制艾滋病毒流行方面保持进展。
