Webinars
UNICEF webinars on HIV and HIV-related topics
Addressing age of consent as a barrier to adolescents' care utilization and engagement
Addressing age of consent as a barrier to adolescents' care utilization and engagement
Embedded video follows February 13, 2019 The webinar covers novel approaches to addressing age of consent barriers. Laws relating to age varies between jurisdictions complicating co-ordinating a response.
Addressing adolescent girls and young women's risk and empowerment
Addressing adolescent girls and young women's risk and empowerment
Embedded video follows July 11, 2018 Presentation by Population Council on Addressing adolescent girls and young women's risk and empowerment: Emerging lessons from the DREAMS Partnership. The event was hosted by UNICEF's HIV and Gender sections. Fostering the impact and use of research to: Ensure relevance of study objectives and results. Promote…
UNICEF learning collaborative webinar with WHO, IAS and CIPHER
UNICEF learning collaborative webinar with WHO, IAS and CIPHER
Embedded video follows November 9, 2017 Three presentations on meaningful engagement of youth from research prioritization to clinical trials, implementation science and policy development. Also, an overview of global research agendas, including testing and treatment, for paediatric and adolescent HIV response
Point-of-care webinar
Point-of-care webinar
Embedded video follows April 17, 2017 Peformance of point-of-care birth HIV testing in primary health care clinics: an observational cohort study. WHO recommends NAT at birth to end EID strategy.
Paediatric-Adolescent Treatment Africa (PATA) 2019 Summit
Paediatric-Adolescent Treatment Africa (PATA) 2019 Summit
Day 1 | Integration with SRHR for adolescents, Embedded video follows Wednesday, 16 October 2019 9:30–10:30 AM ET The Children and AIDS Learning Collaborative is co-hosting webinars from Paediatric-Adolescent Treatment Africa (PATA) 's 2019 Summit, a collaborative meeting that will share lessons and drive action, service delivery improvements and accountability in safeguarding the rights of…, Day 1, of the Summit provided a regional update on adolescent HIV, progress and priorities as well as examples of adolescent service delivery models that are promising and scalable for HIV integration with sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services. Examples included the Mildmay Uganda model of providing adolescent SRHR services and the…, Speakers, Pumeza Runeyi, Médecins Sans Frontières, South Africa Dr Violet Nabette, Mildmay Uganda Alice Armstrong, UNICEF Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa, Selected Q&A, Questions asked by webinar attendees but not covered in the live Q&A session due to time constraints are included below with comments from our presenters. Please note that this section will be updated with additional questions in the next week., To MSF, the viral load suppression rates of 98% are excellent. What is the cost for implementing this strategy?, Pumeza : For this programme, we have not had to bear much cost at all. We are working with the Department of Health and all parts of the programme are done within the facility. The staff and counselors are all from government or from NGOs that are already working in the facility. We are building on resources that already exist. Our costs are…, What have you found missing in health workers' pre-service curriculum on adolescents living with HIV and adolescent health in general?, Violet : The regular training curriculum includes comprehensive management of HIV, which mostly addresses the care of adults and children. There is a special package for health workers who are in-service on adolescent HIV management and care. I think this really needs to be incorporated as a special package because it’s still a big challenge even…, What is your experience in transitioning adolescents living with HIV to adult care?, Violet : The challenge we see in Mildmay is that the adolescents have deep attachments to health care providers. They were often with us as children and had relationships with the providers in the children’s clinic. When they grew into adolescence, they attend the youth center (KYC), where they then built trust and close relationships with those…, What is a good approach to reach older partners of adolescents girls? Sometimes, index testing can be difficult because adolescent girls hide their partners due to legal penalties the older partner might face., Pumeza : It’s really an issue of building trust with the adolescent girls. If they are able to give us the contact, we shall use assisted partner notification to track the partner. And then we don’t have to delve into the issue of penalties because we are assisting. Assisted partner notification is a good approach if we can build trust with the…, To follow-up on the presentation from Uganda, do you do mental health assessments?, Violet: We do mental health assessments and have a resident psychiatric officer. We also do referrals for specialized psychiatric services when needed., To the presenter from MSF: are the adolescents referred to receive a pap smear at the health facility or does it take place at the community hall. If it takes place at the community hall, what steps are taken for privacy and hygiene?, Pumeza : We do pap smears only in the health facilities. There are special days when participants meet in the health facility rather than the community hall; there, they get pap smears and refills. There are no additional sessions on those days. There are other services done in the community hall itself: bloods, family planning, clinical visits,…, Are the basic screening free for the adolescents?, Pumeza : Yes, the basic screening is free for adolescents. Violet : The services are free in most government-aided facilities. At Mildmay, in addition to the basic STI screenings, cervical cancer screening is also free for adolescents., Day 2 | Reaching and serving all adolescent populations, Embedded video follows Thursday, 17 October 2019 9:30–10:30 AM ET The Children and AIDS Learning Collaborative is co-hosting webinars from Paediatric-Adolescent Treatment Africa (PATA) 's 2019 Summit, a collaborative meeting that will share lessons and drive action, service delivery improvements and accountability in safeguarding the rights of…, Speakers, Angelica Pino, Sonke Gender Justice, South Africa Najma Shaikh, Kheth’impilo, South Africa Nyasha Sithole, ATHENA Network, Zimbabwe, Day 3 | Clinic-community collaboration for adolescent services, Embedded video follows, Webinar: PATA 2019 Summit Day 3, #READY for Clinic-Community Collaboration, Friday, 18 October 2019 7:30–8:30 AM ET The Children and AIDS Learning Collaborative is co-hosting webinars from Paediatric-Adolescent Treatment Africa (PATA) 's 2019 Summit, a collaborative meeting that will share lessons and drive action, service delivery improvements and accountability in safeguarding the rights of adolescents and young people…, Speakers, • Cedric Nininahazwe, Y+, South Africa • Dr Immaculate Mutisya, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kenya • Jessica Rodrigues, AVAC, United States of America
HIV and infant feeding guidelines
HIV and infant feeding guidelines
Embedded video follows On May 17, 2016, the Interagency Task Team (IATT) on Children and HIV and AIDS had a webinar on the new WHO HIV and Infant Feeding guidelines. , Key points, Key Themes:, The WHO recommends that HIV positive mothers exclusively breastfeed their infant for the first six months of life then continue to breastfeed until twelve months while introducing other foods. After the first twelve months of life, breastfeeding should only cease when a nutritionally adequate and safe diet can be provided. Health workers are a…, Challenges:, Low rates of first trimester attendance in ANC. Limited capacity for counselling infant and young child feeding. Limited data on breastfeeding status collected at health facility level. Health workers do not have the confidence to translate the current recommendation of breastfeeding to mothers on ARVs into practice for the mothers. Mixed feeding…, Successful Interventions:, Establishment of sustained government leadership from the outset. Peer to peer support such as Mentor Mothers in Kenya with strong mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation. For example, rates of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months for HIV exposed infants (HEI) are between 63 and 92 per cent (programme data, Nyanza Province, 2012).…, Key concerns from the discussion, Does exclusive breastfeeding and prolonged breastfeeding increase the risk of HIV transmission from an HIV positive mother to her infant? , Recent studies have the transmission rate of HIV from mother to child during breastfeeding is around 5% if the mother is on ARV treatment or receiving ARV prophylaxis. The risk of acquiring HIV from breast milk remains as long as the infant is being breastfed, hence the recommendation of stopping at 12 months for HIV-exposed infants as opposed…, How can a HIV positive mother balance the risk of HIV transmission during breastfeeding and the feasibility of providing an adequate diet to the infant upon weaning? , Follow up is necessary to track a mother’s disease status and adherence to ARV regimens so as to reduce the risk of transmission from mother to child during breastfeeding. Incorporate routine viral load monitoring for HIV positive mothers who are breastfeeding as well as more intensive monitoring of HIV infection in infants. HIV positive…, Q&A sessions, Q&A Session After Linda’s Presentation: Feeding in the Context of HIV, Q: Do the Mentor Mothers get paid for the work that they do? , Linda:, Yes, they do and the community health workers have some mechanism for remuneration that is all done through the government so they get paid a minimum wage and it is part of the review at the national level. There was a best practice review and a critical look at how this keeps the staff within the health system. They make the equivalent of a…, Q: How do the Mentor Mothers differ from community health workers? , Linda:, The community health workers in Kenya have a defined package of support which is largely primary care interventions for all of the population. Some focus on mothers and children. They provide the support at the community level so they will often visit households, connect mothers with care, and screen children to identify their needs. They do…, Q: Regarding the Mentor Mothers, how many have now been employed? And do they report any resistance from community members since they work with both people living with HIV and those without? , Linda:, Fifty percent of the country is now accelerating to the Mentor Mothers program. USAID, in its support to Kenya, funds a substantial amount for strengthening HIV care and services. This has been endorsed as their model of support and will be accelerated nationally. Mentor Mothers don’t usually go to the community level. They give the support to…, Q: One slide showed an increase in infection of babies from around 4% at 8 weeks to 7% at 18 months. Is exclusive breastfeeding effective? , Linda:, We still have challenges with exclusive breastfeeding so it’s just been in the last 6-9 months where we’ve seen a lot more clarity. Mentor Mothers provide clear messages about exclusive breastfeeding but it’s sometimes health workers who still give the confusion. We have seen improvements in this area. That’s where you will still see impact with…, Q: Were the mothers of any of the babies who were infected on prophylaxis on ART? , Linda:, We don’t know at a facility level. We have not tracked those specifically. We are doing monitoring and getting anecdotal reports. , Q&A After Nigel’s Presentation: Breastfeeding, HIV & ARVs, Q: Do we have documented experiences on stopping breastfeeding around 12 months? How successful has that been and what are the challenges? , Nigel:, The simple answer to that question, and probably to most that will come in, is no. We have very little documented experience on most of the issues around post-natal transmission and the programmatic issues around implementation of the guidelines. The evidence that was available for the recommendations in 2010 were almost entirely based on…, Jessica:, Just to comment on data on breastfeeding at the health facility level – there was an interesting report released recently by the MOH in Mozambique about early infant diagnosis and it showed transmission rates increasing with age and perhaps some of that was due to breastfeeding transmission and then it showed the link to need for improvement of…, Q: Regarding the study you shared on the low level of knowledge about breastfeeding from 2008, do you think there has been improvement since then?, , Nigel:, Again, I think the answer is, I just don’t know. This is where we really want implementation-type research. But there is no reason to expect any change unless there has been good communication to health workers. One of the things I’m fearful of is that it’s very easy for a ministry to send out guidelines and in a very quick way, say “this is how…, Q: In Latin America and the Caribbean region, PAHO guidance recommends that HIV positive mothers avoid all breastfeeding. In this region, many countries are middle income countries and their governments are opting for following the example of high income countries that are discouraging HIV positive mothers from breastfeeding. Some go even further…, Nigel:, I think it’s very difficult. It all depends on the quality of the health system of the reliability of the health system to get drugs to mothers and support them at the time and to keep women in care. If you have very high confidence in that, then it is a reasonable thing to suggest that HIV positive mothers avoid all breastfeeding, especially if…, Linda:, We have struggled with that and we have a bit of variation within the country. One of the areas of the country that has achieved their MDG targets really wanted to support a formula-based approach. We would really like to see stringent research around that shows evidence of improvement and not a detrimental effect on neonatal and infant…, Karan:, Is there any update on mother to child transmission risk from exclusive breastfeeding versus mixed feeding? In your paper from November there was no evidence of a difference. Is there any update?, Nigel:, With respect, in some ways, I think this may be the wrong question. In the data that has been presented on all the ARV interventions, the research teams, including the study I was involved with, we said that women were supported to exclusively breastfeed but I think in the studies, there was a lot of mixed feeding in those research studies and in…, KK:, UNAIDS shows that as MTCT during pregnancy and delivery decreases, the amount of MTCT during breastfeeding is increasing. There is urgent need to ensure protected breastfeeding with ARVs. Following your comments on the importance of educating health care providers and increasing their confidence of promoting exclusive breastfeeding, how will the…, Nigel:, The first point is that, we need to be careful in saying that the amount of transmission in breastfeeding is increasing, it’s not. It’s not increasing. The proportion of transmission that occurs during breastfeeding is increasing. If over a two year period, there were no drugs and you had 20 children becoming infected through transmission and…, Tin Tin:, As Nigel mentioned, we had a meeting at the end of last year where we discussed some of these issues, especially how to boost healthcare workers’ capacity, knowledge and confidence about giving the appropriate messages to the affected and infected women. One of the things that UNICEF will be taking the lead on this year is to develop a…
PMTCT cascade analysis webinar
PMTCT cascade analysis webinar
Embedded video follows On September 17, 2015 the Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Children and HIV and AIDS partner, Population Council, presented their latest research on a multicountry PMTCT cascade analysis conducted in Rwanda, Kenya, Swaziland and Malawi as part of the USAID-funded HIV Core Project.
Why I take my medicine webinar
Why I take my medicine webinar
Embedded video follows On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 the IATT hosted a webinar on supporting HIV disclosure to children. The webinar featured presentations from the Ministry of Health and Social Services of Namibia, I-TECH and Salamander Trust. To minimize the emotional distress experiences during disclosure, it is important that the process is…