Influence of phone tracing on retention among people living with HIV/AIDS in mbita Sub County Hospital, Homabay County, Kenya

The aim of this study was to assess the influence ofphone tracing on retention among PLHIV in Mbita Sub-County Hospital in order to help policy makers and program managers address the challenge of patient retention in ART programs. The target population was PLHIV who are enrolled on ART in the 12-month cohort of 2016 accessing care at Mbita Sub-County Hospital and involved 75 participants. The research design was descriptive survey, in which data was collected through questionnaires. Participants was obtained through purposive sampling from the 2016-12-month cohort and the simple random sampling technique was used to ensure all members in the sampling frame have an equal chance of being included in the sample. Descriptive statistics was employed as the method for data analysis, since data collected would be based on the questions generated from both qualitative and quantitative information. Datawas thenanalyzed with the help of the Statistical Packages of Social Sciences (SPSS) package. The data was edited, coded, classified and presented as frequency and percentage distribution to examine the relation between the independent and dependent variables. A narrative explanation was also offered in addition to the analyzed data. The findings indicated that Phone tracinginfluences retention among people living with HIV/AIDS. The hospitalmanagement should sensitize the HCWs on the effects of phone tracingon retention among people living with HIV/AIDS. This can be done through seminars that will educate them on the advantages of phone tracing. This study only focused on the influence of phone tracing on retention among people living with HIV/AIDS; phone tracingso another study should be done on other strategies.