comparison of communitybased hiv counselling and testing cbct through index client tracing and other modalities outcomes in 13 south african high hiv prevalence districts by gender and age background to increase hiv case finding in a communitybased hiv counselling and testing cbct programme an index client tracing modality was implemented to target index clients sexual network and household membersobjective to compare index client tracing modalitys outcomes with other cbct recruitment modalities mobile workplace homebased 20152017methods trained hiv counsellors identified hiv positive clients either through offering hiv tests to children and sexual partners of an hiv index client or randomly offering hiv tests to anyone available in the community mobile homebased or workplace sociodemographic information and test results were recorded descriptive comparisons of client hiv test uptake and positivity were conducted by method of recruitmentindex client tracing vs nontargeted community outreachresults of the 1 282 369 people who tested for hiv overall the index modality tested 39 of them 19 in year 1 and 60 in year 2 the index modality tested more females than males 558 vs 442 overall and in each year tested higher proportions of children than other modalities 101 vs 26 among 14 years 122 vs 26 among the 59 years and 96 vs 34 among the 1015 years the index modality identified higher hiv positivity proportions than other modalities overall 103 95ci 100106 vs 73 95ci 725736 in year 1 94 8999 vs 65 645657 and year 2 106 103109 vs 82 809823 higher proportions of females 757475 than males 555455 tested positive overall positivity increased by age up to 49y with year 2s increased targeting of sexual partners overall linkage to care rose from 333 in year 1 to 789 in year 2conclusions index testing was less effective in reaching large numbers of clients but more effective in reaching children and identifying hiv positive people than other modalities targeting hiv positive peoples partners and children increases hiv case finding