Today was a good day in that I met up with several of my colleagues and friends from Hopkins SPH. One is working with PMTCT and early infant detection in Malawi on a national level and we plan to discuss ILF’s future endeavors with maternal and pediatric HIV in Salima. Her insight will be valuable.
Sessions I attended today primarily focused on pediatric ART and EID in resource-limited areas, and the extreme challenges clinics and health care providers face. On a global level, only 8 percent of HIV exposed infants are tested and identified before 1-2 months of age. The goal is to test all exposed infants between 4-6 weeks of age to be able to early-initiate ART, which has shown to decrease mortality associated with HIV by 76 percent. Clearly, the challenges facing these EID programs are universal.