Abstract
Abstract Background: To achieve sustainable development goal 3, Lesotho is striving to scale up ART coverage and increase retention to care and treatment for all HIV positive patients initiated on ART. However, high defaulter rate is still a problem and barrier to successful ART scale up implementation. Evidence shows that defaulter or lost to follow-up is a real problem requiring further investigation. The study seeks to explore possible causes and contributing factors of default among patients initiated on ART from 2016-2017 in two Berea District health facilities. Methods: An unmatched Case-Control Study design was adopted. Secondary data from the patients’ medical records of 2016 to 2017 was used. The data collection was done from the secondary data sources; ART register and ART care card using a pre-coded questionnaire in the form of data abstraction form. The results of this study are based on the frequency distributions and the logistic regression analysis that was performed on the data...
M.A. (Public Health)