Social Network Strategy improves access to HIV testing and harm reduction programs for PWID and their partners in...

The region of Eastern Europe and Сentral Asia has a growing HIV epidemic. Kazakhstan is a country in Central Asia with an estimated 33,000 people living with HIV. The new HIV infections have increased by 29% since 2010. Evidence suggests that HIV testing strategies focused on social networks are effective methods to identify more people with undiagnosed HIV. We conducted a study to describe the optimized HIV case finding (OCF) intervention for people who inject drugs (PWID) and their partners in Kazakhstan.

The OCF is based on recruitment of the extended risk social networks of HIV-positive PWID, using a two-step recruitment algorithm.

There were 5,983 PWIDs and their partners tested for HIV, of those 149 (2.5%) received HIV-positive test results and the majority 145 (97%) were newly identified HIV-positive. The characteristics which had a statistically significant positive association with HIV-positive test results included: age group 15-19 (OR 4.12, 95% CI 1.44-11.7); age group 20-24 (OR 1.97, 95% CI 1.03-3.8); age group 50+ (OR 2.45, 95% CI 1.48-4.1); male sex (OR 1.78; 95% CI 1.2-2.6), participants who have previously received harm reduction services (OR 1.48; 95% CI 1.0-2.2); partners from "other groups" (OR 2.31, 95% CI 1.3-4.2).

Low-threshold HIV testing and harm reduction services, like OCF using directly assisted self-testing and social network strategies are essential in reaching key populations with HIV prevention, increasing access to HIV testing and care.