Innovative approaches to track individuals

Tittle: Utilising Locator form in Tracking and Tracing Key and Priority
Populations lost in HIV care -Bufunda HC III experience

Author: Nuwamanya Nicholas Ruta1 Kyohairwe Medius1 , Ndagano James1

Atukwase Adrine1
1
USAID LPHS-ANKOLE/ACHOLI ACTIVITY

Issue: Retaining patients on antiretroviral treatment in care is critical to achieving

the UNAIDS 95:95:95 for achieving HIV/AIDS epidemic control by 2030. At TASO
Rukungiri, we designed a client locator form to enable trace PLHIV who fail to be
retained in care to ensure that all PLHIV get on and remain on sustainable HAART.
The form captures as many leads as possible for successful tracking and tracing of
PLHIV who fail to return to care while already initiated on ART.
Description:
TASO Rukungiri with support from USAID Regional Health Integration to Enhance
Services in South Western Uganda (RHITES-SW) project designed a locator form to
assist in implementing a proactive follow-up intervention for clients that fail to return
in care. At enrollment of each patient into ART care program, a locator form
capturing obtaining complete information like full name; date of birth; nicknames;
place of birth; residence address and phone; work address and phone number of all
immediate relatives and friend among others is captured. Healthcare workers were
taken through the best practices for patient follow-up including recordkeeping
processes, phone calls and home visits for patients who missed appointments. We
compared patient retention data before and after rollout of locator form.
Lessons learned
The locator form has been in place for 9 months, patient adherence to appointments
and retention in HIV care has increased significantly from 85% to 92%, missed
appointments for HIV positive individuals on ART have remained at 5%. The
improvements in retention in care are more for newly enrolled clients on ART.
Physical follow ups for lost clients through home visits have been minimized as there
are many leads to reach to the client.

Conclusions:
Use of locator form Improves patient tracking and tracing and in the end promotes
patient retention in HIV care.

Next steps:
HIV program managers are encouraged to consider the locator form for each client in
care so as to improving patient retention and tracing incase lost in care.
Key words
ART-Anti-Retroviral Therapy
AIDS-Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome
HIV-Human Immunodeficiency virus
PLHIV-Persons Living with HIV/AIDS
USAID-United States Agency for International Development