Tag Archives: Swaziland

July 26, 2012 · 12:54 pm

Canadian International Development Agency and EGPAF Partner to Increase Uptake of MCH Services

By Robert Yule

This week the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and EGPAF announced a new partnership to promote increased use of services for maternal and child health (MCH) and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT).

On Monday, EGPAF gave a presentation at the IAC’s Canada Booth introducing our work to support national PMTCT programs, and the types of interventions that will be used through the ACCLAIM project with CIDA.

Read below for a joint press release from CIDA and EGPAF about this partnership:  

 

New ACCLAIM Program Will Help Expand MCH/PMTCT Services in Swaziland, Uganda, and Zimbabwe

Washington, D.C. – At the XIX International AIDS Conference, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) today announced a new partnership to improve progress toward elimination of pediatric HIV/AIDS. The project, Advancing Community-Level Action for Improving MCH/PMTCT (ACCLAIM), seeks to increase demand and retention in maternal and child health and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (MCH/PMTCT) services. The project is supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which has pledged CAD $10 million over a four-year period to fund the partnership.

The ACCLAIM Project will focus on changing community norms and attitudes about key health behaviors related to HIV, maternal and child health, and gender through targeted community-based interventions. The project will also use research to assess the behavioral and operational outcomes of selected community-based interventions and their relative effectiveness.

The program will help expand services in Swaziland, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and will focus on three key interventions:

  • Engagement of Community Leaders: Training and capacity-building to generate increased demand for MCH/PMTCT services through development of Community Action Plans
  • Community Days: Semi-annual days of information, communication, and activities to generate awareness
  • Peer Support Groups: Men’s groups and MCH classes to increase and improve MCH/PMTCT behaviors.

CIDA’s contribution is part of the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative, a collaboration with other Canadian federal departments and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As work towards the development of a safe, effective, affordable, and globally-accessible vaccine continues, HIV prevention efforts must also continue, and CIDA is focusing efforts on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

This work will emphasize the need to scale up prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs and reach more HIV-positive pregnant women with simple and highly-effective – yet underutilized – interventions. It will also support operations research to analyze and overcome existing barriers to delivering prevention of mother-to-child transmission services.

“The Canadian International Development Agency has demonstrated a strong commitment to improving the welfare of women, children, and communities affected by HIV and AIDS,” said Charles Lyons, President and CEO of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. “We are proud to work with CIDA on this partnership, which will ensure that more mothers and children have access to essential prevention of mother-to-child transmission services by strengthening community support for those living with HIV and AIDS.”

“Canada is taking action that is saving the lives of women and their children,” stated Minister of International Cooperation, Julian Fantino. “Through our partnership with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, we are working to protect women and children from HIV and prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to their infants.”

While virtual elimination of pediatric HIV/AIDS has been achieved in high-income countries like the United States and Canada, much more needs to be done to protect women and children from HIV in the developing world. Each day, 900 children are needlessly infected with HIV, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. With the proper medicines and PMTCT services, the risk that a mother with HIV will transmit the virus to her baby can be reduced to virtually zero.

It is critical to link vital facility-based PMTCT services with communities, many of which are rural and far from even the closest clinics. The EGPAF/CIDA partnership will address the need for community-level engagement and support for women, children, and families affected by HIV/AIDS.

The global impacts from this project will be:

  • An evidence base for packaged interventions to improve demand, access, retention, and participation in PMTCT programs at the community level;
  • Documentation of challenges and lessons learned from community-focused PMTCT-MCH interventions;
  • The opportunity to implement community interventions across different contexts, with greater involvement of men in PMTCT programs; and
  • The opportunity to contribute to literature on the effects of capacity building of local leaders on HIV/PMTCT outcomes.

Bringing interventions to communities will help ensure uptake and retention in life-saving PMTCT and MCH services, and the healthy survival of mothers, children, and families.

###

About The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF):

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) is a global leader in the fight against pediatric HIV and AIDS, and has reached more than 14 million women with services to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies. The Foundation currently works in more than 5,400 sites and in 15 countries to implement prevention, care, and treatment services; to further advance innovative research; and to execute global advocacy activities in order to bring dramatic change to the lives of millions of women, children, and families worldwide. For more information, visit www.pedaids.org and www.amothersfight.org.

About the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA):

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is Canada’s lead agency for development assistance. CIDA’s aim is to manage Canada’s support and resources effectively and accountably to achieve meaningful, sustainable results. It also engages in policy development in Canada and internationally, enabling Canada’s effort to realize its development objectives.

Leave a Comment

Filed under EGPAF, IAC 2012, Implementation, MCH, Pediatric Treatment, PMTCT, Public-Private Partnerships, Research, Swaziland, Uganda, Zimbabwe

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 23, 2012 · 3:18 pm

“Eliminating pediatric AIDS and keeping mothers alive from an implementation perspective” – Satellite Session on best practices, programmatic barriers and bottlenecks in the field

By Alex Ekblom

On Sunday, EGPAF, mothers2mothers (M2M) and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) hosted a satellite entitled “Eliminating pediatric AIDS and keeping mothers alive from an implementation perspective – best practices, programmatic barriers and bottlenecks in the field.” This was a four-part/panel series of presentations moderated by John Donnelly, a journalist from GlobalPost.

EGPAF Swaziland’s Caspian Chouraya

The first part had to do with country-level approaches around building capacity of HIV service implementers, which highlighted Kenya’s mentor mothers approach (where HIV-positive mothers are trained to coordinate access to and retention in care among other HIV-positive mothers), EGPAF-Zimbabwe’s experiences in reducing costs of all-level health care worker training by reduction in time of training and facilitators (saving $185.00 per participant), and SAATHI’s experience in engaging the private sector to increase local PMTCT capacity (including collaboration of 17 NGOs to increase private site coverage, which has reached 1.2 million women with PMTCT care).

The second panel focused on supporting continuity of care and featured m2m’s work on mother mentors in retaining women through use of smartphones and SMS reminders, and NASCOPs implementation of a courier system to shorten turnaround time for early infant diagnosis of HIV.

The next panel was centered around how to create demand to increase uptake of PMTCT. Examples included the use of m2m mentor mothers, who increase quality of care to clients by relieving health worker burden/task shifting, EGPAF-Zambia’s integration of syphilis and HIV testing (through innovations in rapid testing) and the use of 8 steps to roll out effective integration, and EGPAF-Lesotho’s implementation of integrated health services and the use of Family Health Days, or mobile health services which offer a variety of testing and treatment options for HIV, opportunistic infections.

EGPAF Zambia’s Susan Strasser

The final panel focused on data use and highlighted m2m’s “let’s SOAR” initiative, which included a quarterly data review component, where site coordinators could review daily recorded data and assess areas for needed improvement, EGPAF-Swaziland’s data collection and review mentorship activities, EGPAF-Rwanda’s implementation of an excel macro tools to issue feedback to supported facilities through reports of facility and district data (from which facilities could see where improvements were needed), and EGPAF-Tanzania’s experience implementing quality improvement initiatives to strengthen pediatric care.

Delegates brought interesting questions into the discussion. One of which was how can we better prioritize the “keeping their mothers alive” portion of the global plan. It’s an important point for upcoming work on elimination of MTCT.

Leave a Comment

Filed under EGPAF, Global Plan, Implementation, India, Kenya, Lesotho, MCH, mHealth, Pediatric Treatment, PEPFAR, PMTCT, Rwanda, Swaziland, Syphilis, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

July 22, 2012 · 1:11 pm

Upcoming EGPAF Session: Overcoming Barriers to Implementing Global Plan

By Robert Yule

Join EGPAF, mothers2mothers, Johnson & Johnson, and our other partners at this upcoming session on overcoming implementation barriers to the Global Plan.

This fast-paced session – moderated by Global Post’s John Donnelly – will feature people working on the front lines of program implementation from high-burden countries and representing various implementing organizations. Each presenter will raise a specific challenge, explain how it was addressed, describe the result, and share what is being done next.

The audience will have the opportunity to interact with presenters for further discussion of implementation barriers and solutions.

“Eliminating Pediatric AIDS and Keeping Mothers Alive from an Implementation Perspective – Best Practices, Programmatic Barriers, and Bottlenecks in the Field”
Sunday, July 22, 1:30 – 3:30 PM
Mini Room 1

Leave a Comment

Filed under Global Plan, Implementation, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, PMTCT, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 18, 2012 · 12:15 pm

EGPAF’s Statement on UNAIDS Report on HIV/AIDS

By Robert Yule

Today UNAIDS released a new report on the global AIDS epidemic. Read the Foundation’s statement about the progress made preventing and treating new HIV infections in children and their mothers worldwide, and areas of continued need.

Also see below for ten useful facts and statistics taken from UNAIDS’ Global Plan progress report:

Washington, D.C. – On the eve of the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., a new report released by UNAIDS shows significant progress in the battle against pediatric HIV and AIDS. It also highlights some key areas of improvement needed to reach our goal of ending new HIV infections in children and keeping HIV-positive mothers and children alive and healthy.

According to UNAIDS, about 330,000 children were newly infected with HIV in 2011 – a drop of 60,000 from the previous year. Particularly promising was a reported 25% decrease in new pediatric infections since 2009 among the 21 countries in sub-Saharan Africa identified as high priority by the Global Plan to end HIV among children.
“The significant decrease in new pediatric infections in sub-Saharan Africa is clear evidence that global efforts are turning the tide of the epidemic in children in the part of the world where it is needed most,” said Chip Lyons, President and CEO of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF).
The report also predicts that several countries where EGPAF works – such as Kenya, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – are on track to meet the ambitious 2015 target to eliminate new pediatric HIV infections.
Key to achieving this for all countries is universal access to services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT). The report shows that investments in scaling up PMTCT are bearing fruit. For HIV-positive women living in low- and middle-income countries, PMTCT access has increased significantly – from 48% of in 2010, to 57% in 2011.
“One point of particular concern is that a relatively low percentage of mothers are receiving PMTCT drug regimens in the breastfeeding period, the time in which a significant amount of transmission to infants occurs,” said Lyons. “Too few mothers are also receiving antiretroviral treatment for their own health, which is vital to their survival and for the care of their children.”
For those children living with HIV, testing and treatment remains critical. According to UNAIDS, only 28% of HIV-positive children received antiretroviral treatment in 2011. While this is a slight increase from the previous year, it is still woefully inadequate. Without early identification and treatment, half of children with HIV do not survive to see their fifth birthday.
“As the global health community gathers in Washington for the AIDS 2012 conference, this report shows us where more work is needed, but also where momentum is on our side,” said Lyons. “It should encourage us to rededicate our efforts and our resources to even greater decreases in HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths in children, and to not let up until we get to zero.”
###

Leave a Comment

Filed under Pediatric Treatment, PMTCT, UNAIDS

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,