Point of Care CD4 Testing in National Household Surveys – Results and Quality Indicators from Eleven Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (PHIA) Surveys

Population-based HIV Impact Assessments (PHIAs) are national household (HH) surveys that provide HIV diagnosis and CD4 testing with an immediate return of results. Accurate CD4 results improve HIV-positive participants’ clinical care and inform the effectiveness of HIV programs. Here, we present CD4 results from the PHIA surveys that were conducted in 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa between 2015 and 2018. All of the HIV-positive participants and 2 to 5% of the HIV-negative participants were offered Pima CD4 (Abbott, IL, USA) point-of-care (POC) tests. The quality of the CD4 test was ensured by conducting instrument verification, comprehensive training, quality control, a review of testing errors and an analysis of unweighted CD4 data by HIV status, age, gender, and antiretroviral (ARV) treatment status. Overall, CD4 testing was completed for 23,085 (99.5%) of the 23,209 HIV-positive and 7,329 (2.7%) of the 270,741 negative participants in 11 surveys. The instrument error rate was 11.3% (range, 4.4% to 15.7%). The median CD4 values among HIV-positive and HIV-negative participants (aged 15+) were 468 cells/mm(3) (interquartile range [IQR], 307 to 654) and 811 cells/mm(3) (IQR, 647 to 1,013), respectively. Among the HIV-positive participants (aged 15+), those with detectable ARVs had higher CD4 values (508 cells/mm(3)) than those with undetectable ARVs (385.5 cells/mm(3)). Among the HIV-positive participants (aged 15+), 11.4% (2,528/22,253) had a CD4 value of less than 200 cells/mm(3), and approximately half of them (1,225/2,528 = 48.5%) had detectable ARVs, whereas 51.5% (1,303/2,528) had no detectable ARVs (P < 0.0001). We successfully implemented high quality POC CD4 testing using Pima instruments. Our data come from nationally representative surveys in 11 countries and provide unique insights regarding the CD4 distribution among HIV-positive individuals as well as the baseline CD4 values among HIV-negative individuals. IMPORTANCE The manuscript describes CD4 levels among HIV-positive individuals and baseline CD4 levels among HIV-negative individuals from 11 sub-Saharan countries, thereby highlighting the importance of CD4 markers in the context of the HIV epidemic. Despite increased ARV access in each country, advanced HIV disease (CD4 < 200 cells/mm(3)) persists among approximately 11% of HIV-positive individuals. Therefore, it is important that our findings are shared with the scientific community to assist with similar implementations of point-of-care testing and to conduct a review of HIV programmatic gaps.