Profile of the cohort of people being treated for HIV infection in the SUS, Brazil, 2015–2018

OBJECTIVE: To build an integrated database of individual and service data from the cohort of people who started antiretroviral therapy (ART), from 2015 to 2018, in Brazil. METHODS: Open cohort study that includes people aged 15 years or older who started ART from 2015 to 2018, with follow-up in services of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), and who responded to the 2016/2017 Qualiaids national survey. The source of individual data was the related HIV database, derived from the probabilistic linkage between data from the SUS systems of diagnostic information, medication, tests, and deaths. The data source for the services was the services’ response database to the Qualiaids survey. After analysis of consistency and exclusions, the database of individuals was deterministically related to the database of services. RESULTS: The cohort comprised 132,540 people monitored in 941 SUS services. Of these services, 59% are located in the Southeast region and 49% followed 51 to 500 cohort participants. The average performance of organization and management of patient care ranged from 29% to 75%. Most of the cohort participants are male, black and mixed, aged between 20 and 39 years old, and have between 4 and 11 years of schooling. Median baseline T-CD4 was 419 cells/mm(3), 6% had an episode of tuberculosis, and 2% died of HIV disease. CONCLUSION: For the first time in Brazil, this cohort provides the opportunity for a joint analysis of individual factors and services in the production of positive and negative clinical outcomes of HIV treatment.