Background: A better understanding why people living with HIV (PLHIV) become lost to follow-up (LTFU) and determining who is LTFU in a program setting is needed to attain HIV epidemic control.
Setting: This retrospective cross-sectional study used an evidence-sampling approach to select health facilities and LTFU patients from a large HIV program supporting 61 health facilities in Kisumu County, Kenya.
Methods: Eligible PLHIV included adults 18 years and older with at least 1 clinic visit between September 1, 2016, and August 31, 2018, and were LTFU (no clinical contact for ≥90 days after their last expected clinic visit). From March to June 2019, demographic and clinical variables were collected from a sample of LTFU patient files at 12 health facilities. Patient care status and retention outcomes were determined through program tracing.
Results: Of 787 LTFU patients selected and traced, 36% were male, median age was 30.5 years (interquartile range: 24.6-38.0), and 78% had their vital status confirmed with 560 (92%) alive and 52 (8%) deceased. Among 499 (89.0%) with a retention outcome, 233 (46.7%) had stopped care while 266 (53.3%) had self-transferred to another facility. Among those who had stopped care, psychosocial reasons were most common {65.2% [95% confidence interval (CI): 58.9 to 71.1]} followed by structural reasons [29.6% (95% CI: 24.1 to 35.8)] and clinic-based reasons [3.0% (95% CI: 1.4 to 6.2)].
Conclusion: We found that more than half of patients LTFU were receiving HIV care elsewhere, leading to a higher overall patient retention rate than routinely reported. Similar strategies could be considered to improve the accuracy of reporting retention in HIV care.
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