Trends and spatio temporal distribution of HIV related programmatic indicators in North West Ethiopia from July 2018 up to June 2024.

Ethiopia is one of the HIV high burden countries in Africa. This was compounded by the Conflict and health system breakdown in the northern Ethiopia over the past several years. This study was aimed to assess the trends and spatio-temporal distribution of HIV between July2018-June 2024. The District Health Information software2 (DHIS2) data was obtained from Health facilities with a total catchment area of 170,000 km2. Spatial interpolation and ordinal kriging were conducted to identify hotspot zones in the current study. The data analysis was conducted using SPSS software version 27. Between July, 2018 and June, 2024, a total of 8,592, 243 individuals were tested for HIV in Amhara region (North-west Ethiopia) and among these, 54,746 (0.64%) were HIV positive or HIV test positivity rate. The number of individuals who received HIV testing was ranged from 6,170 in East Gojjam health department to 567 in Debre Tabor town health office. The number of individuals who received HIV test decreased from 1,764,397 in July 2018 to 1,057,879 in June, 2024. The spatial distribution of HIV-related programmatic indicators in the current study indicate that, the hot spot areas for HIV test positivity rate were Kombolcha, Bahir Dar, Dessie, Debre Markos, Debre Birhan, and Woldia town health offices. Similarly, the hot spot areas for PLHIV newly initiated ART were Kombolcha, Dessie and Debre Markos Towns and the hot spot areas for PLHIV currently on ART were also Debre Markos, Kombolcha and Dessie towns. Experience sharing among zonal health departments and town health offices should be conducted to get important lessons from those who had best practice related to HIV tests and ART initiation. More attention in testing HIV should be given for hotspot areas to get more clients living with HIV. Special attention should be given in HIV tests on segregated or marginalized population to get more number of HIV test positivity rate instead of focusing on the test volume.