ArticleAfrican journal of laboratory medicine2022
Optimising courier specimen collection time improves patient access to HIV viral load testing in South Africa.
Article in African journal of laboratory medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Best practices in sample management & pre-analytical quality control: overcoming challenges in resource-limited laboratory settings.Tropical medicine and health · 2026Review
- Scoping review: the current landscape of NIPT in South Africa.Journal of community genetics · 2025Review
- Using data science to investigate rising HIV low-level viraemia results at Groote Schuur laboratory in South Africa.African journal of laboratory medicine · 2025Article
- Challenges, innovations and considerations for the use of tongue swabs in Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex detection.PloS one · 2025Article
- Ten-year health impact, economic impact and return on investment of the South African molecular diagnostics programme for HIV, tuberculosis and SARS-CoV-2.BMJ global health · 2024Article
- An Integrated Sample Referral System for HIV Viral Load and Early Infant Diagnosis in North-Western Province, Zambia-A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Using queueing models as a decision support tool in allocating point-of-care HIV viral load testing machines in Kisumu County, Kenya.Health policy and planning · 2024Article
- Assessing the cost and utilization of SMS printers by primary health care facilities: lessons learned from South Africa.Journal of public health in Africa · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: South Africa uses a courier network for transporting specimens to public laboratories. After the daily collection of specimens from the facility by the courier, patients not yet attended to are unlikely to receive same-day blood draws, potentially inhibiting access to viral load (VL) testing for HIV patients. Objective: We aimed to design an optimised courier network and assess whether this improves VL testing access. Methods: We optimised the specimen transport network in South Africa for 4046 facilities (November 2019). For facilities with current specimen transport times ( Results: The number of annual VL tests per antiretroviral treatment patient (1.14, standard deviation: 0.02) was higher at facilities that had courier collection after 13:36 (the average latest collection time) than those that had their last collection before 13:36 (1.06, standard deviation: 0.03), even when adjusted for facility size. Through network optimisation, the average time for specimen transport was delayed to 14:35, resulting in a 6% - 13% increase in patient access to blood draws. Conclusion: Viral load testing access depends on the time of courier collection at healthcare facilities. Simple solutions are frequently overlooked in the quest to improve healthcare. We demonstrate how simply changing specimen transportation timing could markedly improve access to VL testing.
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