Implementation experiences and insights from the scale‐up of an HIV assisted partner notification intervention in Central Asia

INTRODUCTION: WHO recommends assisted partner notification (APN) for people living with HIV (PLHIV). These services have not been widely scaled in Central Asia. We describe the results from an APN intervention implemented within a programme focused on PLHIV and people who inject drugs in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. METHODS: Routine data from index cases and their partners were analysed from equal‐length periods before and after APN launch. Prior to APN index cases could recruit partners using passive referral, and under APN, had their choice of passive referral or APN (provider, contract or dual‐referral). We compared the demographic characteristics of index cases and their sexual/injecting partners from the pre‐APN and APN periods, described the number/proportion of HIV cases found (positivity rate) and evaluated predictors of HIV infection among partners using logistic regression. RESULTS: Under APN 2676 PLHIV served as index cases and recruited 3735 partners for testing, compared to 4418 index cases and 2240 partners during the pre‐APN period. A total of 322 (8.6%) partners were rapid test positive during APN versus 161 (7.2%, p = 0.048) before APN. Women represented 38% of APN index cases (vs. 42% pre‐APN), 52% of partners tested (vs. 50% pre‐APN) and 56% of all PLHIV identified (vs. 63% pre‐APN). Compared to the pre‐APN period, the number of partners tested per index case recruited increased (0.5 to 1.4, p < 0.001) and the number of index cases needed to find one HIV‐positive partner decreased significantly (27.4 to 8.3, p < 0.001) under APN. CONCLUSIONS: APN was feasibly integrated within a people who inject drugs and PLHIV‐focused HIV programme, and was acceptable to high‐risk populations in Central Asia. Under APN, large numbers of sexual and injecting partners of PLHIV – including women and non‐marital partners – were tested while maintaining high positivity rates. Relative to the pre‐APN period, APN approximately tripled the number of partners recruited per index case and reduced the number of index cases needed to find a positive partner by >3 times.