Data on age, sex, previous test experience, HIV status, clinical stage and CD4 cell count were routinely collected in all individuals testing at the mobile service. Linkage to care was assessed by telephonic or face-to-face interviews in recruited testers with CD4 counts ≤200 and 201–350 cells/μL at 4 and 12 weeks post-diagnosis, respectively. Linkage to care was defined as having attended a healthcare facility for HIV-related care. For the purpose of this analysis, individuals who tested at the mobile HCT services as part of the randomized population sero-survey and who were therefore

personally invited to test and received a voucher were defined as ‘recruited testers’. Individuals who accessed the same mobile testing unit before the survey on their own initiative were defined as ‘voluntary C646 testers’. click here All analyses were carried out using stata version 11.0 (Stata Corp. LP, College Station, TX, USA). Characteristics of recruited and voluntary

testers were compared using cross-tabulation and the χ2 test. A total of 2066 individuals attended the mobile HCT service, including 1144 (88%) of the 1300 randomly selected actively recruited survey participants and 922 voluntary testers. A total of 208 recruited and 45 voluntary testers were excluded from the analysis: 66 tested anonymously and 187 were known to be HIV positive. Therefore, 936 recruited and 877 voluntary testers were eligible for inclusion in the analysis. The mobile HCT service visited the study community on 27 days, seeing a median of 35 clients [interquartile range (IQR) 25–42] per day, prior to the survey. The same unit conducted the sero-survey over a 40-day period, seeing a median of 47 clients (IQR 38.5–55) each day. Age, sex, body mass index and prevalence of tuberculosis symptoms were not significantly different between recruited and voluntary testers (Table 1).

Significantly more voluntary testers had been tested before (72.3%) compared with recruited testers (66.9%). The proportion of individuals who had had an HIV test within the last 12 months was higher among voluntary testers (45.6%) compared with recruited testers (35.8%). The Cell press yield of cases of newly diagnosed HIV infection was significantly higher among recruited testers [10.9%; 95% confidence interval (CI) 9.0–13.1%] compared with voluntary testers (5.0%; 95% CI 3.7–6.7%) (Table 1). CD4 count distributions were different, with a larger proportion of individuals with advanced immune suppression (CD4 count ≤200 cell/μL) among recruited testers (17.8%) compared with voluntary testers (4.6%). The median CD4 count was 385 cells/μL (IQR 267–602 cells/μL) among the recruited testers and 414.5 cells/μL (IQR 309–680 cells/μL) among voluntary testers. Linkage to care was assessed in 33 (80.5%) out of 41 recruited testers with a CD4 count ≤350 cells/μL.