J Int Aids Soc
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Adherence to antiretroviral treatment (ART) is critical to maintaining health and good clinical outcomes in people living with HIV/AIDS. To address poor treatment adherence, low-cost interventions using mobile communication technology are being studied. While there are some studies that show an effect of mobile phone reminders on adherence to ART, none has reported on the costs of such reminders for national AIDS programmes. This paper aims to study the costs of mobile phone reminder strategies (mHealth interventions) to support adherence in the context of India's National AIDS Control Program (NACP). ⋯ The cost of the mHealth intervention for ART-adherence support in the context of the Indian NACP is low and is facilitated by the low cost of mobile communication in the country. Extending the use of mobile communication applications beyond adherence support under the national programme could be done relatively inexpensively.
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Little is known about the well-being on long-term exposure to antiretroviral therapy. The ACTG Augmented Symptoms Distress Module (ASDM) is a validated tool which measures the presence of a total of 22 symptoms seen with HIV and quantifies the extent to which they cause distress to the patient. ⋯ In this large group of positively selected HIV+ patients with virological success and long-term exposure to ART, a high degree of symptom-related distress was found. Medical care of HIV-infected patients should not only focus on optimal virological outcome. More data on quality of life in patients with long-term exposure to ART is needed.