O impacto da pandemia da COVID-19 nas pessoas que vivem com o vírus da imunodeficiência humana.

Abstract

Introduction: the disease of the new Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) brought several changes in the routine of the world's population, which generated significant impacts on quality of life. The group most affected by these changes were people with chronic diseases, as they need special health care, especially people living with HIV (PLHIV). With social restrictions, these people can be exposed to lack of medication, difficulty accessing clinics and issues related to vulnerability and social stigma. Methodology: This is a systematic literature review on the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on PLHIV. The PRISMA checklist was used to prepare this study. A search was carried out in five databases using the keywords and the Boolean connector “AND”. Results: after the search, 283 articles were located, initially duplicates and those that were not available in full were removed; leaving 167 articles to read the title and abstract, after this process, 48 articles were selected for full reading. After reading these articles in full and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 20 articles remained for the literature review. Discussion: social restriction may have contributed to the reduction in attendance at medical consultations and the reduction in the number of PLHIV who attended to seek ART. Several factors may have contributed to the reduction in clinic visits: fear of infection when leaving home, lack of public transport, violence used in police roadblocks, and lack of financial resources. Several strategies were used by the clinics to try to help PLHIV to continue the treatment and other necessary care, such as delivering medications through postal services, delivery to community locations and changing the label so that family members would not see the name of the medications. In some places, enough medication was delivered for 3 to 6 months of treatment, however, in some places, due to the risk of drug shortages, PLHIV only received enough medication for one month. Conclusion: the pandemic brought negative impacts, such as a decrease in attendance at consultations, a reduction in diagnoses of new cases of HIV and a reduction in attendance at clinics for recharging ART, but it also showed that people who continued using ART were able to achieve viral suppression at better rates than before the pandemic.