The Global Health Delivery Partnership Rwanda team published an important report documenting the strength of accompaniment and its effect on clinical outcomes. The report, "Excellent Clinical Outcomes and High Retention in Care Among Adults in a Community-Based HIV Treatment Program in Rural Rwanda," appears in the March 1 issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (Vol 59, No 3). 

The article reports clinical and programmatic outcomes at 24 months for a cohort of patients enrolled in a community-based ART program in southeastern Rwanda under collaboration between Partners In Health and the Rwandan Ministry of Health. A retrospective study of 1041 patient records found that 92% were retained in the treatment program after two years. The program reported significant improvements in virologic and immunologic responses and other signs of better health. The article also discusses limitations of the study and calls for further investigation, for example, of the question potentially relating program scale-up to decreased retention. The article concludes that "This study reinforces published evidence demonstrating that HIV treatment outcomes in resource-limited settings can match or exceed those in wealthy countries, but also demonstrates that excellent results can be sustained in a large program." It calls for quality benchmarks, such as 90% long-term treatment retention, in sub-Saharan country HIV programs.