Mobile outreach reaches fishing camps with HIVST

The fishing economy along the Lindi and Kilwa coastline is mobile, cash-rich, and predominantly male. Crews land at dawn, sleep at the camp, drink in the evening, and depart again before clinics open. Static services miss them by design.

EpiC runs a structured mobile outreach calendar covering eighteen landing sites and three offshore staging islands, with each site visited at least twice per month and timed to coincide with landing days.

Across the quarter the mobile teams made 2,840 KVP contacts and delivered 1,640 HIV tests, including 1,180 provider-administered tests and 460 HIVST kits issued to crew leaders for distribution.

Fifty-four individuals tested positive. Forty-nine (91 percent) initiated ART within seven days; the five who did not were tracked into the following cycle and four of the five eventually initiated by week twelve.

Mobile outreach is expensive per contact, but cheap per case found. The cost per HIV-positive case identified through fishing-camp outreach in this quarter was 38 percent lower than the equivalent cost at static drop-in centres — a finding that has shaped the Year Three budget allocation.