"Abstract:

Background: The COVID-19 is highly contagious infectious caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In preventing the spread of COVID-19 infection the WHO has set stringent preventive measures which have been implemented in various countries including Tanzania. Preventive measures includes social distancing, wearing of mask, hand sanitization, hand wash, vaccination and lockdowns. However, the COVID-19 preventive measures may have mitigated the special healthcare services towards HIV patients. Therefore, this study is aiming to give a crucial information that would aid the consistency of health services towards not only HIV patients, but other individuals with diseases for the case of another outbreak.

Method:  Both interview based cross-section study and retrospective study were used through systematic selection of participants. The project was conducted for  one month, April, 2023. The overall changes in visitation was depicted using a paired sample t test.

Results and discussion: Of all the 375 patients, 59.7% were females Most of the patients who were interviewed had a primary school level of education 75.5% and most of the respondents were aged 41 to 50 years of age. The overall change in visitation before and during COVID-19 was measured using number of new HIV clients enrolled per month and HIV clients who missed their appointment clinics, where both had p-value <0.01 which is statistically significant. For the case of the period before and after COVID-19 all variables measuring overall changes in visitation had p value <0.01.

Conclusion: COVID-19 had significantly altered routine HIV services and clinic visitation, thus resulting into short time and occasionally long time effects. This is due to the fact that, PLWH had fear of contacting coronavirus due to HIV being the risk factor. Thus, they reduced regular clinic visitations which in turn reduced the frequency of respective service per person. "