• African health sciences · Jun 2013

    Case Reports

    Personal barriers to antiretroviral therapy adherence: case studies from a rural Uganda prospective clinical cohort.

    • B N Mayanja, E Kabunga, B Masiira, R Lubega, P Kaleebu, and J Seeley.
    • MRC/UVRI -Uganda Research Unit on AIDS. P.O. Box 49, Entebbe, Uganda.
    • Afr Health Sci. 2013 Jun 1; 13 (2): 311-9.

    BackgroundAlthough good adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) is essential for successful treatment outcomes, some patients may have specific personal barriers to ART adherence.ObjectivesTo study specific personal barriers to ART adherence.MethodsQuantitative data on patients' health status, ART adherence, CD4 cell counts and viral loads were collected, and qualitative data on life experiences of five patients with poor ART outcomes and adherence were also collected.ResultsOut of 35 patients with poor immunological and virological ART outcomes, 17 (49%) also had poor ART adherence. Patient 1 had no living child and did not disclose her HIV serostatus to her spouse because she wanted to have a child. Patient 2 was an orphan with neither social nor family support. Patient 3 stopped ART when she conceived, returned to the study clinic when pregnant again and was sickly. She was switched to second-line ART with satisfactory outcomes. Patient 4, a 14 year old orphan had missed ART for 2 months when his treatment supporter was away. Patient 5 aged 66 years stopped ART which he blamed for his erectile dysfunction.ConclusionART adherence counselling should target specific personal barriers to ART adherence like: lack of family support, health and sexual life concerns, desire to have children and family instability.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.