Profile of direct walk-in and referred clients attending Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre

The HIV pandemic has had a profound impact on the health and economic conditions of individuals, and people living with HIV/AIDS are faced with the task of maintaining optimal health status despite an increasing insult to their immune status. The aim of the present study was to study the profile of direct walk-in and referred patients attending the Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre (ICTC) of a tertiary care hospital, which may provide important clues to understanding the epidemiology of the disease in a particular region. The study included all the attendees of the ICTC referred from the hospital or direct walk-in from January 2007 to December 2007. Three rapid HIV tests were used and the samples showing positive results in all the three tests were declared HIV positive. The results were analysed to correlate between HIV positivity, age, sex, route of transmission and direct walk-in/referred patients. A low proportion of ICTC attendees (27%) in our study were direct walk-ins. As regards HIV positivity, 312 (8.3%) out of 2440 males and 164 (4.3%) out of 1315 females were HIV positive. Among the referred HIV-positive patients 162 were males and 62 females, whereas among the direct walk-in HIV-positive patients, 150 were males and 102 females. Integrated counselling and testing is now seen as a key entry point for HIV prevention. In addition to scaling up ICTC services, it is also important to raise awareness by aggressive health education programmes and integration of ICTC into various community organizations.