AEGiS-USIS: Partnership Helps Improve Laboratory Systems in African Nations: Five-year program targets HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis in hardest-hit countries

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Partnership Helps Improve Laboratory Systems in African Nations: Five-year program targets HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis in hardest-hit countries

USIS Washington File - November 2, 2007
Cheryl Pellerin, USINFO Staff Writer

Washington -- A public-private collaboration between the U.S. government's global AIDS program and a New Jersey medical device company, launched October 31, aims to improve laboratory systems and services in eight African countries most severely affected by HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB).

Accurate diagnosis is essential for treating and preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, TB and other diseases, but laboratories in developing countries often lack resources, qualified health workers and access to training for laboratory technicians.

The five-year, $18 million partnership between the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) will support training and improved diagnostic capabilities critical to managing HIV/AIDS and TB patients.

"The best way to increase the impact of what we're already doing is not to duplicate efforts but to bring additional resources to work, and that's exactly what we intend to do with this partnership," Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt said during an October 31 press briefing.

"BD's expertise in laboratory diagnostics will help advise programs currently under way," he added, "and [PEPFAR's] coordination and additional funding will help those programs leverage what we'll now bring to the table."

EXTENDING TREATMENT

Under PEPFAR, the largest international health initiative ever undertaken by a single country, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is the lead agency for strengthening laboratory systems.

BD, a global medical technology company with 28,000 employees in 50 countries, has conducted more than 300 training sessions in 55 developing countries, reaching 3,000 laboratory technicians in collaboration with government health ministries, nongovernmental organizations and U.S. agencies, including CDC.

"Increasingly," said BD Executive Vice President Gary Cohen, "public health and HIV/AIDS leaders have come to recognize that lack of sufficient capacity and capability to provide health services, including laboratory testing services, has become the primary barrier to further extending HIV/AIDS treatment access in developing countries."

Activities in the collaboration will be implemented through country-specific programs in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa, and through short-term technical assistance to provide training for all levels of service.

In South Africa, for example, the collaboration will help the new regional training laboratory double the training offered to all PEPFAR-supported countries in Africa. This regional laboratory will also expand significantly the number of health care workers trained to provide quality HIV testing.

Expanded counseling and testing efforts will make it possible for more Africans to know their HIV status, benefit from prevention counseling and receive referrals for life-saving treatment. In the first year alone, the public-private partnership will allow PEPFAR to increase laboratory capacity an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent over current levels.

COMPLICATED THERAPIES

Over five years, the partnership will:

• Support country-specific programs to develop integrated laboratory systems and services and improve laboratory quality;

• Improve laboratory diagnostics critical to managing HIV/AIDS patients by training health personnel;

• Implement quality-control and quality-assurance guidelines and supervisory tools for hematology, chemistry, rapid HIV testing;

• Strengthen TB reference laboratories to serve as centralized training facilities; and

• Improve access to TB diagnostics for HIV-positive patients.

"Antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS and treatment therapies for tuberculosis, the leading cause of death for people living with AIDS, are not like taking aspirin," Cohen said. "These are complicated therapies that require accurate diagnosis, sophisticated tests for patient monitoring, and other vital health services."

The link between TB and HIV/AIDS is a serious global health problem, and the partnership will focus on improving training materials and practices for diagnosing and managing people living with HIV/AIDS who also have TB.

"TB is important in HIV because it's the leading killer among people who are HIV-positive," said Ambassador Mark Dybul, U.S. global AIDS coordinator. "The link between HIV and TB is something we must tackle."

The partnership, he added, "will allow us to do the types of tests we need to identify drug-resistant tuberculosis, including extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, which is something that's important not only in sub-Saharan Africa but also to us here at home."

As a first step, Cohen said, BD and PEPFAR will work on the ground with ministries of health, national reference laboratories and implementing partners to develop or strengthen national laboratory strategic plans for each country.

More information about PEPFAR, the CDC Global AIDS Program and BD is available on the organizations' Web sites.

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