Study Population
We enrolled the first participant on August 20, 2020. In December 2020, we were informed that before mid-October, 45 of 63 (71.4%) POwER participants had their routine pre-enrolment VLs measured on a defective Alinity m HIV-1 VL analyzer that overestimated some VL results. Therefore, the viremic sample used to determine eligibility may have been falsely high. After discussion with the ethics committees, we informed affected participants immediately and offered them to continue or terminate from this study; all opted to continue. We determined to exclude these participants from the primary analysis and to enroll a total of 125 participants (Fig. POWER study CONSORT diagram. EAC, enhanced adherence counselling; POC, point-of-care.After excluding the stated 45 participants, we enrolled 80 participants who met the eligibility criteria. The median age was 38.5 years (interquartile range [IQR], 33–45), 58.8% were female, 78 of 80 (97.5%) were enroled at the PCZ CDC, and the median time on ART was 3.1 years (IQR, 1.0–5.7) (Table Baseline Characteristics of Eligible Participants Enrolled in the POwER Study, n = 80N, (%) unless stated otherwise.EAC, enhanced adherence counselling.In the standard-of-care arm versus the intervention arm, there were slightly higher proportions of women (27 of 41, 65.9% versus 20 of 39, 51.3%), people who reported never missing a dose of ART (21 of 41, 51.2% versus 14 of 39, 35.9%), unemployed people (18 of 41, 43.9% versus 10 of 39, 25.6%), and people with ≤30 minutes travel time to clinic (24 of 41, 58.5% versus 18 of 39, 46.2%). Other demographics and clinical variables were well-balanced between the 2 groups.