Experience of Offering HIV Rapid Testing to At-Risk Patients in Community Health Centers in Eight Chinese Cities

To explore the feasibility of offering HIV counseling and testing in community health centers (CHCs) and to provide evidence for the HIV/AIDS response in China.Forty-two CHCs were selected from the eight cities that participated in the study. Rapid testing was mainly provided to: clients seeking HIV testing and counseling (HTC); outpatients with high-risk behavior of contracting HIV; inpatients and outpatients of key departments. Aggregate administrative data were collected in CHCs and general hospitals and differences between the two categories were compared.There were 23,609 patients who underwent HIV testing, accounting for 0.37% of all estimated clinic visits at the 42 sites (0.03%–4.35% by site). Overall, positive screening prevalence was 0.41% (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.33%–0.49%, range 0.00%–0.98%), which is higher than in general hospitals (0.17%). The identification efficiency was 0.22% (95% CI: 0.16%–0.27%) in pilot CHCs, 3.5 times higher than in general hospitals (0.06%) (Chi square test = 95.196, p<0.001). The percentage of those receiving confirmatory tests among those who screened positive was slightly lower in CHCs (73.7%) than in general hospitals (80.1%) (Chi-square test = 17.472, p