Home-Based Care, the Missing Link in Caring of Patients Living with HIV/AIDS and Their Family Members: A Narrative Review

Inconsistencies between the number of patients, qualified caregivers and lack of adequate services and<br />resources in the healthcare systems for people living with HIV/AIDS have led to the idea of providing<br />healthcare services for this vulnerable population at home. This study aimed to review the evidence<br />related to the Home-Based Care (HBC) programs in the context of HIV. Literature search was carried<br />out without publication date limit through English databases of Cochrane Library, PubMed, EBSCO,<br />Scopus, Google Scholar, Science Direct, as well as Persian databases including Magiran and SID by<br />the end of July 2019. Out of 1312 studies retrieved from the search of databases, six guidelines and 50<br />articles met the eligible criteria. The results showed that the overall purpose of HBC is to create hope<br />through providing appropriate care to help the patients and their families to maintain their independence<br />and have the best possible quality of life. The potential benefits of HBC could be discussed in three<br />main categories: 1) patients, including patients’ satisfaction, quality of life, adherence to antiretroviral<br />therapy, preventing mother-to-child transmission, as well as biochemical, social and psychological<br />outcomes, 2) families, consisted of promotinon of family members’ participation, enhancement of<br />family members’ awareness and provision of voluntary counseling and testing, and 3) healthcare<br />systems, containing health care costs, workload at healthcare centers and time spent on services. Given<br />the lessons learnt from the existing HBC programs, developing an alternative approach for providing<br />healthcare at home in the context of HIV seems necessary and could be an agenda for action in health<br />policy making in Iran.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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