Epidemiology of candida bloodstream infections in a tertiary care institute in India.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that alternative confirmatory strategies using algorithms with combinations of screening tests produce reliable results comparable to those of the standard ELISA and Western blot.[3-5] Moreover, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) program on HIV/ AIDS currently recommends the routine use of combinations of screening tests for HIV screening, surveillance, and diagnosis.[2] Hence, we hope that this rapid, cheap, alternative testing strategy will provide an accurate result and reduce the overall cost of HIV diagnosis. Furthermore, HIV positive individuals will be able to get a confirmed result during their second visit. This will not only allow counselling and testing personnel to guide HIV infected individuals more effectively for treatment but also prevent a large number of HIV positive patients from being lost to follow-up. As such, we recommend that resourcelimited countries should consider adopting combination of rapid tests as an alternative strategy to LIA/WB for confirmation of HIV infection in their National recommendations.