LET’S IMPROVE PEDIATRIC HIV TESTING

By Lumbiwe Mwanza

As Zambia strives to end HIV epidemic control for adults, the need to increase pediatric testing should be scaled up, the Treatment, Advocacy and Literacy Campaign (TALC) has said.

Zambia will on August 15 commemorate the National HIV Testing Counselling and Treatment Day as part of interventions aimed at creating a more inclusive environment for persons living with the virus.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.7 million children worldwide were living with HIV in 2020, yet only half (54 percent) were receiving Antiretroviral Treatment (ART), compared to 74 percent of adults with HIV, despite notable expansion of pediatric ART.

Speaking with The Scoop, TALC National Director Felix Mwanza said ahead of this day, it was important that stakeholders and the Government strengthened collaborations in having more children tested and put on treatment.

Mr. Mwanza said that implementing effective and efficient case-finding strategies was crucial to increasing pediatric antiretroviral therapy coverage.

“Despite the advances of the past two decades in the understanding of the characteristics of HIV, the means to prevent its transmission and the pathophysiology of the progression from HIV infection to symptomatic AIDS, as well as the development of effective antiretroviral therapy, HIV infection among children remains a significant problem that needs more strategies to address especially in rural areas where ignorance is still very high.

“Point-of-care for early infant diagnosis of HIV improves treatment initiation. Despite significant scale-up of programs to prevent Mother-to-Child Transmission (MTCT) of HIV, children are getting infected with HIV every day. If left unchecked with adequate policies and strategies, infected children will continue suffering,” Mr. Mwanza explained.

He said the Government needed to continue looking at ways of adapting strategies for effective and efficient pediatric HIV testing and treatment adding that ensuring that effective screening tools were developed using logistic regression methods could significantly improve HIV testing efficiency among children was important.

He noted that despite strategies for early infant diagnosis being in place, lack of timely maternal testing during pregnancy and low testing coverage in rural areas continued to undermine efforts of eradicating the pandemic by 2030.