High Concordance of Self-Reported and Objective Measures of Antihypertensive Use in Individuals Living with HIV in a Resource-Limited Setting

In sub-Saharan Africa, people living with HIV are at increased risk for hypertension, and rates of controlled hypertension are extremely low (1).In resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Malawi, medication availability is limited by supply and cost constraints (2, 3), and patients often struggle to fill prescriptions (2).The absence of electronic health records in many health facilities further complicates the verification and tracking of patients' use of antihypertensives.Self-reports of antihypertensive medication use can be susceptible to biases and inaccuracies, particularly in settings with low health literacy, and inaccurate self-reports could lead to suboptimal medical management.Objective data from medical records are typically considered more reliable, but in low-resource settings, medical records are not always available, necessitating alternative measures.In this study, we examined the reliability of selfreported antihypertensive medication use among individuals living with HIV and hypertension in Malawi.