Acceptance and Feasibility of Partner Notification to HIV Infected Individuals in Guinea-Bissau

As partner notification (PN) has shown effective in increasing the number of partners of HIV infected patients being tested we aimed to evaluate the feasibility of implementing PN in the West-African country Guinea-Bissau. Patients enrolled were offered the choice of three different PN methods. Acceptance, successful referrals and HIV status of partners were evaluated. Of 697 patients offered PN, 495 (71.0%) accepted and listed 547 partners. At end of follow-up 118 (21.5%) partners had been tested of which 44 (37.3%) were HIV infected. HIV infected partners had a higher median CD4 count at diagnosis compared with index patients; 401 cells/mm3 versus 240 cells/mm3, p < 0.001. The results indicate that implementation of PN is feasible, effective in identifying HIV infected partners and enables initiation of earlier treatment, yet there are major barriers to bringing partners in for testing which should be addressed in order to exploit the full potential of PN.