The study sites in Busoga region, a sub-region of Eastern Uganda were selected according to the following criteria:

1. The area has both a public and private facility supplying ARVS.
2. The sites were relatively research naïve.

Two facilities were chosen for the purpose of this research. One of these, the Jinja Regional Referral Hospital (JRRH), is accredited to offer ART through the Global Fund. At the time of this study, the services available at this facility included ART, voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) for HIV and treatment for opportunistic infections. The hospital collaborates with TASO, to which they refer their patients for continuing support.

The other facility, the Nile Treatment Centre (NTC), is a nongovernmental agency in Jinja. Since January 2004, NTC has been providing AIDS care and treatment for opportunistic infections for about 600 inpatients. In addition, NTC has outpatient facilities for AIDS treatment and VCT. However, it has no support programme for PLWHIV.

All patients attending the two facilities who were at least 18 years of age, on ART, and willing to participate in the study were included. Systematic sampling was used to select the final sample, based on the selection of every third patient visiting the clinic on the day of the fieldwork. Where a patient was not interested in being included in the study, the next patient was considered instead (except when selecting participants for the focus group discussions (FGDs) according to sex, when the next female or male patient was chosen, as appropriate).