OVERVIEW

WP 3 – HIV

THIV remains a public health menace in West Africa despite its relatively low prevalence compared to in East and Southern Africa [12]. According to the UNAIDS Global epidemic update and health sector progress towards universal access report 2011, none of the West African countries was among those who achieved 80% coverage of HIV treatment; only Benin was cited amongst those with 60% coverage and no West African country had a decline of more than 39% of number of children with new infections between 2009-2011. In Guinea Bissau the number of new infections among children increased. Nigeria was listed amongst the countries with less than 25% PMTC coverage despite being just behind South Africa in HIV burden globally. Furthermore, no PrEP trial and limited implementation of PrEP and TASP has been carried out in at-risk populations such as MSM, sero-discordants, or sex-workers cohorts in the region. To improve the situation, WANETAM- will carry out the following work package activities that will strengthen capacities in HIV surveillance for drug adherence and resistance; diagnosis and feasible viral load monitoring, including early paediatric diagnosis.

Objectives

• Establish a unified cohort database of at-risk populations and facilitate the sharing of data including ART-acquired and ART transmitted resistance  across participating sites
• Validate and roll out Viral load assays for both HIV 1 and HIV 2
• Facilitate a platform and train sites on HIV drug resistance testing
• Strengthen South-South and North-South Collaboration Complete?

Activities

• To develop the West African unified HIV cohort database
  • HIV-WP – Activity 1 – Enriching unified cohort database of at-risk populations and sharing data resource
  • HIV-WP- Activity 2 – Develop and sharing data on   ART-acquired and ART-transmitted resistance in the treatment programs.

Validate and roll out Viral load (VL) assays for HIV-1 and HIV-2

• HIV-WP–Activity 3 – Validation of the In-house HIV-1/HIV-2 RT-PCR VL assay and Viral load POCs evaluation
• HIV-WP-Activity 4– Phasedimplementation of VL assays

HIV specific training on drug resistance tests and VL/paediatric HIV diagnosis

• HIV-WP-Activity 5 Training attachment for drug resistance test
• HIV-WP-Activity 6 – Training workshop on VL and early infant diagnosis (EID)