HIV/AIDS Care Outcomes in Children and Adolescents

All individuals ≤ 18 years old living with HIV/AIDS who attended the NPRH HIV follow-up clinic from 2005–2020 were enrolled in the study. Those with a follow-up duration of < 6 months missing key follow-up data, unknown follow-up duration, and those with no therapy outcome endpoints, were excluded (Fig 1). Unknown duration of follow-up refers to patients who don’t have last point of their show-up in the clinic after being enrolled. It is treated differently from those who are known to be lost to follow-up. As those who are lost to follow-up could be censored according to their therapy outcome till the last point they were known to be in follow up. All eligible children and adolescents received free treatment for HIV–according to the national ART Guidelines. The guidelines endorsed the use of two Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs) and a Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors NRTI (NNRTI) as the standard first-line regimen and use of protease inhibitors as second-line regimens. All Children were prescribed fixed-dose combination tablets. Assessment of drug adherence was routinely conducted by monitoring missed doses.