Comparison of Door-to-door Versus Community Gathering to Provide HIV Counseling and Testing Services in Rural Lesotho

12 health centers (clusters) in rural Lesotho are matched according to their routine performance in VCT and enrollment into chronic HIV/AIDS care (average numbers tested positive and enrolled into HIV/AIDS care per month per facility). After matching, 6 health centers are randomly assigned to perform door-to-door VCT, whereas the others perform the traditional community gathering approach (called "pitso" in Sesotho). Within the catchment area of each health center five campaigns in five different, randomly selected villages, are held (one day VCT campaign per village). Within each cluster another five villages are randomly selected who do not get a particular campaign and serve as a control for each cluster. In each matched cluster-pair, both health centers conduct the five campaigns during the same week (one conducting it as door-to-door, the other one conducting it through "pitsos" (community gathering)). Both approaches receive the same resources in terms of finances, time spending doing the VCT-campaign and human resources.