Social network methods for HIV case‐finding among people who inject drugs in Tajikistan

INTRODUCTION: HIV testing programmes have struggled to reach the most marginalized populations at risk for HIV. Social network methods such as respondent‐driven sampling (RDS) and peer‐based active case‐finding (ACF) may be effective in overcoming barriers to reaching these populations. We compared the client characteristics, proportion testing HIV positive (yield), and number of new cases found through two RDS strategies and an ACF approach to HIV case‐finding among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Tajikistan. METHODS: Routine programme data from adult PWID recruited to testing under the HIV Flagship Project in Tajikistan were analysed to compare client demographic and clinical characteristics across the three approaches. We also compared the number of previously untested clients, the number of new HIV cases found, and the yield across the case‐finding strategies, and evaluated predictors of new HIV diagnosis using fixed‐effects logistic regression. RESULTS: From 24 October 2016 to 30 June 2017, Flagship tested 10,300 PWID for HIV, including 2143 under RDS with unrestricted waves (RDS1, yield: 1.5%), 3517 under restricted RDS (RDS2, yield: 2.6%), and 4640 under ACF (yield: 1.5%). Clients recruited under ACF were similar in age (35.8 vs. 36.8) and gender (91% vs. 90% male) to those recruited through RDS, though ACF clients were more likely to report being a first‐time tester (85.1% vs. 68.3%, p < 0.001). After controlling for age, sex, previous testing history and accounting for clustering at the site level, we found that clients tested under both RDS1 (aOR: 1.74, 95% CI: 1.04 to 2.90) and RDS2 (aOR: 1.54, 95% CI: 1.11 to 2.15) had higher odds of testing newly positive for HIV relative to clients recruited through ACF. We did not find significant differences in the odds of new HIV infection between those recruited from RDS1 versus RDS2 (aOR: 1.12, 95% CI: 0.67 to 1.86). CONCLUSIONS: RDS‐based interventions resulted in higher yields and overall case‐finding, especially when recruitment was restricted. However, ACF identified a higher proportion of first‐time testers. To find at least 90% of PWID living with HIV in Tajikistan, it may be necessary to implement multiple case‐finding approaches concurrently to maximize testing coverage.