Theme: Epidemiology & Public Health Research Year: 2018
Background: During the period 2013-2017, 84 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) run the HIV prevention program among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Ukraine, which included HCV rapid testing. 167,930 PWID were tested on HCV at 1,569 service delivery sites. 26% got positive results. HCV prevalence among PWID is 63.9%. Methods: Programmatic monitoring data analysis Results: In 2013 – 2014, the doctors provided HCV testing at 387 outreach sites. In 2015, Alliance for Public Health started directly assisted self-testing through NGOs: clients conducted rapid self-testing with the support of social workers at NGOs’ sites. New testing model helped to increase the quantity of service delivery sites to 1,271, that increased the quantity of testing sessions in 1.8 times (in comparison with the previous 3 years) and helped to find 25% more positive results. During the period 2013-2017 among HCV positive clients 6% PWID got HIV positive results, among HCV negative clients – 1.8%. Besides testing, clients got prevention counselling, syringes, needles, condoms, etc. 28% of HCV negative clients tested repeatedly, among them 89% remained HCV negative. For 11% of PWID the HCV testing results changed to positive, the percentage of clients with HIV positive test results changed from 1.4% to 4% (for HCV negative PWID the percentage of clients with HIV positive results slightly changed from 0.8% to 1%). The representatives of HCV positive PWID were male clients (78%) 30-45 years old (73%). 59% of clients – PWID with HCV and HIV positive test results were enrolled into HIV care during the period (in the compared group of HCV negative PWID – 99%). Conclusion: The prevention program among PWID enabled 89% repeatedly tested clients to remain HCV negative. The specific attention in HIV and HCV prevention should be paid to the male PWID 30-45 years old. Disclosure of Interest Statement: Tetiana Mykhalchuk has no potential conflicts of interest presenting programmatic data analysis results at the conference.
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