Strengthening HIV surveillance in the antiretroviral therapy era: rationale and design of a longitudinal study to monitor HIV prevalence and incidence in the uMgungundlovu District KwaZulu-Natal South Africa

摘要

BackgroundSouth Africa has over 6,000,000 HIV infected individuals and the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) is the most severely affected. As public health initiatives to better control the HIV epidemic are implemented, timely, detailed and robust surveillance data are needed to monitor, evaluate and inform the programmatic interventions and policies over time. We describe the rationale and design of the HIV Incidence Provincial Surveillance System (HIPSS) to monitor HIV prevalence and incidence.