RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleMultilingual abstracts Please see Additional file 1 for translations of the abstract into the six official working languages of the United Nations. Background At the end of 2013, 35 million people were living with HIV worldwide, of which nearly 10 million had started antiretroviral therapy (ART) [1,2]. More than two-thirds of the global cases are located in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [2-5]. Not all patients who present at an earlier stage of their illness are eligible for ART, and even if they are eligible, prompt initiation of treatment will de-pend on several factors including availability of medi-cines and trained health workers [3,6,7]. Eligible patients are also hindered from accessing heath care and initiat-ing treatment due to factors such as distance to health-care facility, social stigma, being in a less advance