Abstract:
Background: There is mounting evidence that the risk of death from COVID-19 among
people with HIV could be as much as twice that of the general population. Recent evidence
revealed that HIV services has been decreased by 75% and the problem is much more
extensive in Ethiopia since most of the logistics for HIV services and fund donated by the
good will of NGOs. Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on HIV services is a crucial
first step to draw appropriate intervention. Thus, this study aimed to assess the impact of
COVID-19 pandemic on HIV services in northwest Ethiopia.
Methods: An institution-based repeated cross-sectional study was conducted in Gondar city
in August 2021. The DHIS-2 system, operated by FMOH contains data from all the nine
health facilities for HIV care was used to extract data from the central repository. Excel data
was exported to STATA 14 for analysis. We calculated indicators of HIV services, representing the 12 months pre-COVID 19 (2019) and 16 months during the COVID-19 period (2020
and 2021). ANOVA was used to detect the presence of significant mean differences between
those periods. Assumptions of ANOVA was checked. The statistical significance was
declared at 95% confidence interval (CI), p-value less than 0.05.
Results: The mean difference was significant within HIV_VCT, HIV_PICT, ART between
the years 2019 before COVID-19 and 2020 during COVID-19 (p-value < 0.05). HIV_VCT,
ART variability was substantial between the years 2019 and 2021 (p-value < 0.05).
Conclusion: COVID-19 seriously affected all aspects of HIV service uptake such as HIV
VCT, HIV PICT, ART, newly started ART, TB screening, and lost to ART follow-up. This
study urges optimizing ART delivery mitigation with the ongoing COVID-19 in Ethiopia and
beyond, in order to maintain progress toward HIV epidemic contro
