Continuous care for people living with HIV/aids in the state of Maranhão: analysis and construction of the cascade

Abstract

Infection caused by the human immunodeficiency virus is an important public health problem, despite advances in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease. The objective was to analyze the stages of continuous care for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in the State of Maranhão. It is corresponds to longitudinal study of the stages of the continuous care cascade in a time series. The population consisted of all PLWHA living in Maranhão. Data were collected from the Information Systems for Notifiable Diseases, the Logistical Control of Medications and the Control of Laboratory Tests for the period from 2013 to 2018. The analyzes were carried out in the Python program, version 3.8. 10,733 cases of HIV/AIDS were reported. Most PLWHA were male, aged between 25 and 39 years old, brown, with between 8 and 11 years of schooling and the predominant exposure category was heterosexual. As for the evaluation of the achievement of the 90-90-90 goal, although those diagnosed and in suppression present higher percentages than proposed in relation to the previous step, keeping those diagnosed on HAART, so that they reach the suppression phase, has been a challenge that distances the reach of the goal. The greatest reach occurred in 2018, with 61.87% of those diagnosed reaching the suppression phase, with a deficit of 19.10% for reaching the goal. It was observed that despite the advances that have occurred over the years analyzed, the proposed target has not yet been reached, indicating the need for greater efforts.