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AIDS 2014: m2m in Melbourne

On Thursday, July 24th, Sarah Auma from m2m’s Uganda country office presented at the International AIDS Conference. Here are the details of her work:
Contribution of Lay Health Providers in Scaling Up Option B+ Intervention
IMG_0052Aim: The Mentor Mother programme facilitates proactive linkage of peers to health workers, mitigating barriers to ART adherence. Goal is to accelerate ART initiation and retention in care among peers.
Methods: Education on Option B+, encouraged sharing of testimonies, active client follow-up.
Results: From January to June, there was an improvement of 41% to 98% in pregnant and lactating women in psychosocial support groups that began Option B+.

  • 77% of those who needed a CD4 test, received it
  • 93% of infants were given a PCR test
  • 94% of mothers who had not disclosed to a spouse or family member, disclosed.
  • In subsequent quarters, Mentor Mothers followed-up on 96% of the 104 missed appointments and were able to get 86% of those mothers to return to care.

On Wednesday, July 23rd, Emeka Okonji from m2m’s head office in Cape Town and Milker Simba from the Kenya country office presented posters at the International AIDS Conference. Here are the details of their work:
Comparing PCR test outcomes of infants born to HIV+ mothers enrolled in m2m programmes antenatally progressing to postnatal care vs. mothers enrolled solely during postnatal care; presented by Emeka Okonji
IMG-20140723-WA0013Aim: Evaluate effectiveness of m2m’s peer education and psychosocial programme via infant PCR test outcomes.
Method: Use data from 5,162 HIV+ clients in Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanaznia, & Uganda. 55% of mothers received antenatal and postnatal care, 45% only received postnatal care. Of the 5,162 eligible, 82% received a PCR test.
Results: HIV+ women enrolled in the m2m programme before giving birth had statistically significant improvements in health outcomes vs. mothers enrolled during postnatal care, in multiple measures of health.

  • Use of ARVs during labor was 94% for those enrolled antenatally vs. 86% for those enrolled postnatally
  • Postnatal ARV uptake was 87% for those enrolled antenatally vs. 77% for those enrolled postnatally
  • PCR results showed that 93% of mothers enrolled antenatally gave birth to negative babies with only 1% delivering positive babies vs. 88% negative/4% positive for those enrolled postnatally

View Emeka’s Poster
Effective Monitoring of HIV prevention: re-testing HIV-negative clients; presented by Milker Simba from Kenya
IMG_1359Aim: Evaluate effective methods of re-testing HIV-negative mothers.
Method: Mentor Mothers interact with HIV- clients during two focused interactions, a first visit and a return visit for re-testing. Mentor Mothers encourage male partner testing and have a tracing process to ensure follow-up with clients.
Results: Of the 15,632 HIV- clients retested from January-December 2013, 178 seroconverted and tested positive during re-test (1.1%).
Conclusions: Uptake of re-testing during pregnancy is a significant challenge, due to late presentation of clients, frequent shortages of HIV testing kits and/or health workers, and low rates of return for re-testing (23%).
View Milker’s Poster

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