BACKGROUND Point-of-care testing is increasingly being used in general practice to assist GPs in their management of patients with chronic disease. However, patient satisfaction and acceptability of point-of-care testing in general practice has not been widely studied. AIM To determine if patients are more satisfied with point-of-care testing than with pathology laboratory testing for three c...

BACKGROUND Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been scaled-up rapidly in Africa. Programme reports typically focus on loss to follow-up and mortality among patients receiving ART. However, little is known about linkage and retention in care of individuals prior to starting ART. METHODOLOGY Data on adult residents from a periurban community in Cape Town were collected at a primary care clinic and...

The United Nations is committed to achieving universal access to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care, treatment, and prevention. Although the gateway to HIV care and secondary prevention is knowledge of serostatus, use of voluntary counseling and testing in resource-limited settings with the highest burden of HIV infection and AIDS has been limited. On the basis of evidence of increased pat...

INTRODUCTION Point-of-care testing for CD4 cell count is considered a promising way of reducing the time to eligibility assessment for antiretroviral therapy (ART) and of increasing retention in care prior to treatment initiation. In this review, we assess the available evidence on the patient and programme impact of point-of-care CD4 testing. METHODS We searched nine databases and two confer...

BACKGROUND To evaluate the effectiveness of the National Train-the-Trainers Program for Hospice and Palliative Care Experts (TTHPC) sponsored by the National Cancer Center of Korea between 2009 and 2012. This program was developed to improve the teaching skills of those in the field of hospice and palliative care (HPC). MATERIALS AND METHODS Training was offered in eight 1-day sessions betwee...

BACKGROUND A mobile HIV counseling and testing (HCT) program around Johannesburg piloted the integration of point-of-care (POC) CD4 testing, using the Pima analyzer, to improve linkages to HIV care. We report results from this pilot program for patients testing positive (n = 508) from May to October 2010. METHODS We analyzed 3 primary outcomes: assignment to testing group (offered POC CD4 or ...