Abstract:
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pan-
demic in sub-Saharan Africa and other high prevalence
regions continues to overwhelm health care systems. While
there has been a global response to improve the delivery of
antiretroviral therapy in these high prevalence regions, there
are few models that have developed an adequate plan to
deal with HIV specifically in resource-poor emergency
department settings. In this manuscript, we report on the
experience scaling up HIV care at one emergency depart-
ment in a large referral hospital located in western Kenya.
Specifically, we describe how rapid bedside HIV testing
helps to narrow the differential diagnosis of disease
processes in acute care patients and how HIV screening of
patients discharged from the emergency department can
detect HIV-infected individuals
