A study on clinical outcomes of people living with HIV/AIDS on anti retroviral therapy from rural hospital in Nepal.

Anti Retroviral Therapy has been started in Nepal since 2004 and the treatment centers have been upgrading all over the country regularly. A prospective observational study was carried out from August 2008 to December 2009 with an objective to evaluate clinical outcome of People Living with HIV/AIDS undergoing the therapy as per National Guidelines. After taking written informed consent pre-structured questionnaire was filled and patients were followed for next six months. All information were entered into SPSS 11.5 system and analyzed. Out of 44 patients, 24 (54.6%) were males and 20 (45.4%) were females. Age group 31-35 years were predominant 16 (36.6%) followed by 36-40 years 12 (27.2%). Clinically WHO stage III was found among 97.7% of the patients and 45.4% of housewives got HIV transmitted from husbands. Anti Retroviral Therapy was started in 25 (59.2%) of patients within three months HIV test positive. From initiation of therapy till six months there was, 1.7 kg of mean increase weight gain and 354 cells/mm3 increase in mean Total Lymphocyte Count. Opportunistic infections occurrence decreased significantly from 34.1% to 2.3% and 41 (93.2%) patients had drug adherence scale of more than 95 percentile. Hence it can be concluded that there is an urgent need of expanding the accessibility of the therapy to eligible patients throughout the country.