EAPoC-VL

Description

UNAIDS adopted the 90:90:90 strategy to end the HIV epidemic by 2020. The third 90 aims to have 90% of people living with HIV on antiretroviral treatment (ART) suppress the HIV virus (VL) in their plasma. Challenges exist in achieving this target, especially in children and adolescents. In East African (EA), VL suppression among children and adolescents ranges between 65%-75%. A key strategy to achieving VL suppression is 6 monthly VL monitoring, but this is not achieved in children and adolescents. One of the barriers to routine VL monitoring is the centralized VL monitoring used in EA. Point of care (PoC) VL monitoring is a novel approach that has been validated and eliminates most of the challenges associated with centralized VL monitoring. This project proposes to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of PoC HIV VL monitoring to improve VL suppression rates among children and adolescents in East Africa.