Testing

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.

In follow-up to the 2017 Continental Summit in October 2017, Pediatric-Adolescent Treatment Africa (PATA) released a summary report with key highlights and recommendations from the meeting. Towards an AIDS Free Africa – Delivering on the frontline was the focus of the 2017 Summit, which brought together over 200 delegates across 15 sub-Saharan African countries along with programme implementers and policy-makers from across the globe. The recommendations provided are centred around three pillars – FIND, TREAT and CARE – that support the UNAIDS superfast-track framework. Attending health facility teams drafted new quality improvement plans and will be commencing 53 projects improving service delivery at the frontline in 2018.

The strategic plan focuses on preventing new HIV infections in order to maintain a low HIV prevalence in the next six years. The NSP aims to reduce new HIV infections by 50% by 2020; intensify the provision of quality and accessible HIV prevention information and services for key populations; and also accelerate actions to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2020, including placing positive mothers on lifelong antiretroviral therapy (Option B+) as the preferred regime of treatment for HIV positive pregnant women.

Kenya AIDS Strategic Framework 2014/15-2018/19

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