Summary Table.

This table summarizes points contained in this paper.

Current knowledge The low number of qualified clinicians limits the availability to provide universal HIV treatment coverage in Africa. Effective means of shifting tasks to lower cadres of health staff without reducing quality of care can increase the patient capacity at HIV treatment sites. One possible means of task shifting is triaging patients between those requiring full clinical assessment and those stable on treatment and who can go home without needing full clinical assessment.

Contribution of this paper The clinical protocol developed in this research has good discriminating abilities (sensitivity = 87%, specificity = 47%) for patient triaging. The analysis identified areas for improvement in this HIV treatment triaging protocols, including questions not initially asked and questions that were consistently answered incorrectly. Administering the triaging protocol on an electronic handheld device supports complete and thorough assessment by lower cadres of health staff. The PDAs were readily adopted by the clinic staff for this study.