HIV prevalence and treatment coverage among injecting drug users in Vinh, Nghe An using a community-based Responding Driven Sampling, in 2019

Abstract

A cross - sectional suvey using the community - based to determine HIV prevalence and treatment coverage among injecting drug users in Vinh, Nghe An using a communitybased Responding Driven Sampling, in 2019. Initiated with 16 seeds, 367 IDUs were recruited according to standard RDS methods in 6 weeks. HIV prevalence was 6.5%. Among HIVinfected IDUs, 62.5% knew their status; among those who knew their status, 93.3% received antiretroviral treatment (ART); among those being treated with ART, 78.6% had a HIV viral load below 20 cp/mL, and 21.4% between 20- 1000 cp/mL. The proportion of IDUs receiving Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) was low (26.5%), and the rate of sharing needles, syringes or distilled water was 20.1%. We found that implementing the cRDS model is feasible outside of a research framework and can approach a large IDUs for estimation of HIV prevalence and cascade of ARV care for a precis intervention on HIV forward ending HIV epidemic in IDU population.