Tool

CDC-Atlanta Maternal Child HIV Branch and International Lab Branch, in collaboration with partners, have developed tools to support health care workers and laboratorians to provide services to HIV-exposed infants, including infant virologic testing.

DBS Job Aids for the Laboratory: DBS receiving, storage, and acceptance criteria

Intended Audience:
Laboratorians who receive dried blood spot specimens.

Summary:
These are job aids that provide basic information for laboratorians about how to receive, process and store DBS specimens. These job aids apply to DBS specimens that are collected for EID, Viral load or drug resistance testing. They may be displayed on the wall in the laboratory for easy reference.

CDC-Atlanta Maternal Child HIV Branch and International Lab Branch, in collaboration with partners, have developed tools to support health care workers and laboratorians to provide services to HIV-exposed infants, including infant virologic testing.

DBS Job Aids for the Clinic: DBS collection, drying, and packaging

Intended audience:
Health care workers who collect specimens for EID on dried blood spots, dry and package specimens for transport.

Summary:
These are visual job aids that are a simplified version of the content provided in the EID video. They cover DBS collection, drying and packaging in the health clinic. They may be displayed on the wall in a health centre for easy reference.

CDC-Atlanta Maternal Child HIV Branch and International Lab Branch, in collaboration with partners, have developed tools to support health care workers and laboratorians to provide services to HIV-exposed infants, including infant virologic testing.

Care of the HIV-Exposed Infant Flipchart

Intended audience:
Health care workers or lay health workers who counsel the caregivers of HEIs.

Summary:
The purpose of this flipchart is to facilitate comprehensive, high quality counseling about the care needs of mothers and HIV-exposed infants to prevent vertical HIV transmission and improve infant health.  The flipchart addresses the importance of maternal health and ART adherence, as well as care and testing for the HIV-exposed infant until the infant’s final HIV diagnosis after the end of breastfeeding.

This flipchart should be printed in large format (A3 or similar), spiral bound and laminated for durable use in health clinics. There are 12 counseling cards total – each card has one side with images for the mother/caregiver and the other side with notes for the counsellor.

Topics include: basics of vertical HIV transmission, maternal health during pregnancy and breastfeeding, safe delivery, infant testing, infant medications – cotrimoxazole and ARV prophylaxis, routine infant care -- growth monitoring and immunizations, infant feeding, family planning, signs of acute child illness, and planning for mother and infant follow up.

PATA and PACF have worked across 9 countries and strengthened 36 community-clinic collaborations through their partnership on the three-year C3 programme on collaboration between Clinics and Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) to deliver services together for improved PMTCT-paediatric case finding and HIV treatment.

Together, PATA and PACF have identified how clinical-CBOs collaboration at a local level can be in transforming health responses. They developed a Clinic-Community Collaboration Toolkit and accompanying Be Connected e-learning course informed by the C3 programme’s successes and lessons learnt.

Through these new tools, they hope to continue empowering health providers as well as encouraging community-based staff and local coordinators to initiate, expand and improve upon joint activities and action plans, in a collaborative effort to strengthen their work on paediatric and adolescent HIV.

Appel pour l’accélération de l’élimination de la transmission mère-enfant du VIH et le traitement antirétroviral chez l’enfant en Afrique de l’ouest et du centre d’ici 2020

Call for the acceleration of the elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission and antiretroviral treatment for children in West and Central Africa by 2020

This WHO’s Evidence Brief highlights some of the key points of discussion during the ESA regional consultation on HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health and rights for Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) held in Windhoek on 1-3 February. The Evidence Brief is now available here.

WHO launched in May the long-awaited Global Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents (AA-HA!): Guidance to Support Country Implementation. Click here for the press-release and other resources. This is a guidance to operationalize the adolescent component of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2020). Interestingly, this new guidance moves away from entry points for adolescent health, as HIV and SRH, to address broader adolescent health issues.  Click here to access the AA-HA! guidance document.

This helps individuals forecast adult and/or pediatric ARV in treatment programs and manage demand on a clinic level.