Table 2.

Measures of delay for the adult care cascade employed in the peer-reviewed literature

	Testing/diagnosis	Linkage/enrolment	Retained in care	Treatment	Viral suppression
Peer-reviewed literature	Late testing is commonly defined in the peer-reviewed literature in terms of concurrent diagnoses of HIV and AIDS [15–19] or as a measurement of time between HIV and AIDS diagnosis [20–24].	Late enrolment is defined in relation to the time between HIV diagnosis and presentation to a wide range of HIV-related services including enrolment, CD4 evaluation and treatment initiation.	Different retention measures and their association with the likelihood of individuals achieving viral suppression have been employed [25–28].	Late treatment is measured multiple ways. WHO and UNAIDS recommend treatment initiation when CD4 <500 cells/mm3 or with an AIDS-defining event, regardless of CD4 count at the time of treatment initiation.	A majority of studies used thresholds in the 300–500 RNA copies/mL range [13].