Ndlovu, P.; Desai, D.; Malafi, M.E. Challenges in Monitoring Anti-retroviral Therapy (ART) Clients in Developing Countries: A Comprehensive Narrative Review. Preprints2023, 2023121031. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.1031.v1
APA Style
Ndlovu, P., Desai, D., & Malafi, M.E. (2023). Challenges in Monitoring Anti-retroviral Therapy (ART) Clients in Developing Countries: A Comprehensive Narrative Review. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.1031.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Ndlovu, P., Dev Desai and Maria Eleni Malafi. 2023 "Challenges in Monitoring Anti-retroviral Therapy (ART) Clients in Developing Countries: A Comprehensive Narrative Review" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.1031.v1
Abstract
Monitoring of clients living with HIV encompasses a specific array of activities that routinely check on various aspects of ART following its initiation depending on the availability of resources in that particular state, among other factors as per guidelines from the World Health Organisation. This is a significant practice as it promotes positive health outcomes for patients and efficient utilisation of ART regimens to reduce resistance to the medication – hence it is a measure to guard avoidable costs. It also forms a basis on which decisions are made from. It can be done clinically by assessing for signs e.g., skin rash and symptoms e.g., nausea and vomiting, checking vital organ function and measuring weights across all populations, or can be also be done by assessing specimens for their respective viral loads, white blood cell count, pregnancy status or other infections such as hepatitis B. There have not been any special indications required for one to be eligible for monitoring during ART in developing countries; all qualify for routine monitoring even though some may be more frequent than others in cases of comorbidities such as renal failure where medications can be attributed to exacerbating the condition.
Keywords
HIV; AIDS; STDS; ART
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Immunology and Allergy
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
