But in sub-Saharan Africa including Ethiopia, there is substandard information about treatment results and the impact of ART on mortality of children.
Information on baseline ART regimen were not collected, which would have been a pointer to drug resistance and virological failure and may have possibly helped in explaining the role of timing of ART on mortality in terms of adverse-events and toxicity of individual drugs.
Studies on HIV-positive patients attending clinics can provide estimates of the impact of ART on mortality (28), but do not capture the impact of those who do not know their HIV status, or who have not been assessed for eligibility for ART.
The measurement of the impact of ART on mortality requires long-term follow-up in communities where regular HIV testing allows the estimation of mortality by HIV status, such as the population cohorts in the network for Analysing Longitudinal Population-based HIV data in Africa (ALPHA) (3).
It is most likely that the impact of ART on mortality will be realised only when wider coverage of VCT and ART are achieved in Kisesa.
In rural Hlabisa sub-district of KwaZulu-Natal, both HIV and TB remain major causes of morbidity and mortality, despite the recent impact of ART on mortality and HIV incidence [ 5- 9].
The impact of ART on mortality, morbidity, TB incidence [9], [10] and HIV transmission [11] at a population level depends on ART coverage.
A national survey was conducted in all public and private sectors in Malawi that provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) to determine the uptake of ART by army personnel, their outcomes while on treatment, and the impact of ART on mortality in the Malawi Defence Force.
All these factors can limit the impact of ART on mortality (13).
Adherence to ART has been shown to be very high and a recent study of the mortality under ART in this programme concluded that "the overall effect of ART on mortality was similar to or better than that seen in facility-based studies " [ 33, 34].
