POC

Finding life after loss

In 2017, UNAIDS estimated 3,300 children under the age of 15 years died from AIDS-related causes in Cameroon. A key challenge is diagnosing and treating infants early in life. Now a new point-of-care device, which provides results within minutes of testing, has overcome some major obstacles to treatment, giving hope to thousands of mothers and their families.

Integrated Testing for TB and HIV using GenExpert Devices Expands Access to Near-Point-of-Care Testing

This brief summarizes lessons learned from Zimbabwe’s pilot implementation of integrated or multi-disease testing. Partnerships in the country focused on leveraging existing GeneXpert platforms for both TB and HIV testing to improve access to early infant HIV diagnosis and viral load testing. These findings describe the benefits of integrated testing for clients, health providers and the health system and are a resource for other countries scaling up point-of-care integrated testing.

Integrated Testing for TB and HIV using GenExpert Devices Expands Access to Near-POC (English)
Integrated Testing for TB and HIV using GenExpert Devices Expands Access to Near-POC (French)

Accelerating Access to Point-of-Care Viral Load Testing for Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women Living With HIV

This brief highlights the current scenario of policies and programmes related to point-of-care viral load testing among pregnant and breastfeeding women living with HIV. In many countries, viral load policies are not differentiated for pregnant and breastfeeding women despite evidence that point-of-care viral load testing is helpful for this population. Same-day results for pregnant and breastfeeding women can help ensure timely initiation of ART, improved rates of viral suppression and retention in care to support efforts of preventing vertical transmission of HIV.

Accelerating Access to Point-of-Care Viral Load Testing for Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women Living With HIV (English)
Accelerating Access to Point-of-Care Viral Load Testing for Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women Living With HIV (French)

POC EID Training Package

 

POC EID Training Package

 

This training package provides materials to guide onsite training for the introduction of POC EID testing. 

The topics focus on what health workers at each facility need to learn in order to confidently begin POC EID high quality testing; the package provides materials for both classroom and hands-on learning opportunities.

Quality Assurance

 

Quality Assurance

 

A strong quality assurance (QA) system is critical for ensuring the accuracy and precision of test results produced through POC diagnostic technologies. QA for POC testing has many components, including internal quality control, external quality assurance, data connectivity, and strong supervision and mentoring.

Quality Assurance Costing Tool

 

Quality Assurance Costing Tool

 

This excel-based tool is designed to help countries model the cost of a comprehensive quality assurance (QA) program. It is composed of eight approaches to providing QA for diagnostic equipment. These include internal controls; mentorship; external quality control proficiency testing (international and national); duplicate testing; data management through connectivity; paper-based external quality assurance; and e-modules. 

Author: CHAI
Year: 2017

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