HIV/AIDS: Expert Identifies Solutions To MTCT Elimination Barriers

Towards the elimination of barriers to prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (MTCT) of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, an expert has proferred solutions.
The expert, Dr Ijaodola Olugbenga, who is the Assistant Director, National Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV/AIDS Lead of the National AIDS and Sexually Transmited Infections (STIs) Control Programme in the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH), identified four key solutions.
Stating the solutions in his presentation, “Overcoming Barriers Towards Elimination of MTCT of HIV”, in a recent media dialogue to reinvigorate and produce a workplan for journalists reporting PMTCT, Dr Olugbenga said the first among the four solutions is to get accurate data on PMTCT and use such data to plan all programmes on PMTCT implementation.
In doing so, he said, there should be clear evaluation of PMTCT programmes, establishment of infant surveillance system to measure impact on ongoing basis, using the findings for continuous improvement in quality; and the need to map out all the facilities delivering Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition (RMNCAH+N), particularly from the health facilities that have not been reported.
He continued that there’s also the need to link all data sources to the National Data Reposition (NDR), including District Health Information 2 (DHI 2), due to the urgent need to incorporate PMTCT data on the NDR.
There is also the need to conduct Data Quality Assessment to improve on what he called “numerators”, knowing that serious data quality issues exist both nationally and sub-regionally, as well as strengthening of Monitoring and Evaluation capacities and coordination of data systems at federal and state levels.
The second solution, Dr. Olugbenga said, it is to “Strengthen Compliance and Standardisation of Care Packages as well as quality of care across all partners”.
This, he said, will take the form of integrating HIV into RMNCAH-N in order to strengthen collaboration with the National Health Primary Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and Family Health Division, as well as optimisation of the 4-prongs of PMTCT.
The 4-prongs of PMTCT are approaches aimed at enhancing the achievement of the objectives of PMTCT.
They are: Preventing HIV in women of reproductive age; Preventing unintended pregnancies in women living with HIV; Preventing HIV transmission from mother to child; and Ensuring treatment, care, and support to women living with HIV, their children and families.

By: Soibi Max-Alalibo