Changing burden of HIV/AIDS to clinical settings in Northern Thailand over 15 years.

We conducted a hospital-based descriptive study to describe the changing pattern of patient numbers characteristics and mortality rates among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients in northern Thailand over 15 years. The survival status on October 31 2010 of all HIV-infected adults who attended an HIV center in a government hospital between 1995 and 2010 was ascertained. In total 3706 patients were registered 2118 (57.2%) of which were male. The survival status of 3439 patients (92.9%) was available. In addition 1543 deaths were identified out of 12858 person-year-observations (PYO) resulting in a mortality rate of 12.4 deaths/100 PYO (95% confidence interval [CI] 11.3-13.0). An initial decline in mortality rates was observed prior to 1999 probably because of an increase in the proportion of less symptomatic patients. After the introduction of the national highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) program a profound decline in mortality rates was observed reaching 2.0 deaths/100 PYO (95% CI 1.4-2.9) in 2010. Simultaneously the number of patients on follow-up increased by nearly fourfold. Although HAART has drastically improved the survival of HIV-infected patients the number of patients receiving therapy at this HIV clinic has substantially increased. While referral of HIV patients to general physicians care should be urged we cannot overemphasize the importance of preventing new HIV infections.