Matiwos Soboka

Abstract Abstract Introduction: - The HIV/AIDS epidemic has been truly global with 186 countries reporting HIV cases or deaths in 2012. More than 65 million people have been infected with HIV and 30 million people have died due to AIDS related causes since the emergence of AIDS in 1981. Because of impact of the rapid scale-up of ART in some countries with large epidemics there was decline in HIV/AIDS mortality and incidence. However, adherence to antiretroviral treatment (ART) affected by factors like depression, substance abuse and treatment beliefs. Also treatment factors like regimen complexity, side effects and contextual factors are identified to affect ART adherence. Nevertheless, nutritional and counseling intervention is efficient for increasing adherence to ART. Thus this systematic review will focus on some of the intervention like counseling, nutritional supplementation and material support to increase patients’ adherence to ART medication and clinical outcomes. Objective: - The objective of this review is to determine the effectiveness of counseling, material support and/or nutritional supplementation on improving adherence to anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and clinical outcomes of patients Methodology: - The review will consider studies that include HIV-positive patients aged 18 or more who have ever started taking ART drugs. This review will consider studies that include counseling, nutritional support and material support to improve adherence to ART medication. Outcome of the study will be, adherence improved, clinical progression of HIV patients as measure by viral load, clinical staging and CD4 count The databases to be searched include: MEDLINE and CINAHL. We will use Joanna Briggs Institute Meta-Analysis of Statistics Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-MAStARI) (Appendix V) for the selected paper for retrieval