March 25, 2008

Google Logo Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm

Home Visits Improve AIDS Outcomes

In rural areas of developing countries, home visits can vastly lower AIDS and all-cause mortality rates. Cynthia Graber reports.

Illustration of a Bohr atom model spinning around the words Science Quickly with various science and medicine related icons around the text

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Podcast Transcript: When it comes to saving lives, a personal touch can sometimes work better than drugs alone. That’s what researchers in Uganda found, in a study published in the journal the Lancet. Scientists studied the efficacy of home visits to AIDS patients in rural areas that aren’t served by clinics. Lay workers with no clinical training visited patients weekly to provide potent anti-AIDS drugs.

The thousand study participants also received supporting interventions including insecticide-treated bed nets to avoid malaria infection and a safe water system. After two years, researchers compared the results of the rural home visits to urban clinics that only administer drugs. In the rural homes, AIDS-related mortality was reduced by more than ninety percent. There was also a sharp decline in child mortality from all causes.  Additional cost for these results—25 cents per patient per day.

Researchers caution that the dramatic benefits can’t be attributed to home visits alone and may have been aided by the additional measures, for example, bed nets.  But the results are in line with similar conducted in other countries, such as Haiti.

—Cynthia Graber

60-Second Science is a daily podcast. Subscribe to this Podcast: RSS | iTunes

It’s Time to Stand Up for Science

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.

I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.

If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.

In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can't-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world's best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.

There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.

Thank you,

David M. Ewalt, Editor in Chief, Scientific American

Subscribe
Home Visits Improve AIDS Outcomes