Prevalence of HIV-associated malignancies among PLWHAs accessing HIV services in Abia State, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Malignancies are features of late HIV presentation. In Nigeria the eligibility criteria for enrollment into ART programme is CD4 cell count <500 cell/mm3 one would have expected increasing prevalence of malignancies among the patients, none was so far reported. This is probably because the ART card/proforma used in capturing the data from enrolled patients has no provision to capture malignancies or HIV care providers and lacks resources required for diagnosis of cancers. There is therefore a need for health care providers to be properly trained to detect malignancies in PLWHA and also increase their indices of suspicion.