Leveraging innovation to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in Mozambique — a photo story
Story by: Unitaid
Children with tuberculosis at Maputo Central Hospital will soon be able to receive the child-friendly TB treatment developed by the TB Alliance and its partners with funding from Unitaid. The new formulation is soluble, fruit-flavoured, and affordable. Before Unitaid’s investment, children around the world did not have access to appropriate TB medicine. As a result, caregivers often had to cut or crush tablets intended for adults. Imprecise dosing frequently led to continued illness.
A high-level Unitaid delegation visited Mozambique in September 2017 to see first-hand how the innovations it is funding in HIV testing, TB treatment and malaria prevention are making a difference in the lives of adults and children on the ground.
Timely diagnosis of HIV in infants born to HIV-positive mothers, and regular monitoring of viral load levels in people receiving HIV treatment, remains a challenge in low-income countries. This health centre outside Maputo (Centro de Saùde de Ndlavela) offers point-of-care early infant HIV diagnostic testing as part of the UNICEF/Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) project funded by Unitaid. It aims to expand access to innovative point-of-care technologies for early infant diagnosis of HIV and viral load monitoring of HIV. Thanks to the test, infants and their mothers are able to receive the results in 50 minutes.
During the Unitaid visit, a 30-day old baby girl was tested for HIV and the test came back negative. The infant is monitored for 18 months following the test. If the mother misses the appointment by 7 days, a health worker goes to the village to find the mother and child.
The Unitaid grant is being implemented in 10 African countries, including Mozambique. Through the project, CHAI and UNICEF are also seeking to optimize existing laboratory networks and to create a healthy market for point-of-care diagnostic products. Without early diagnosis and treatment, 30 percent of HIV-infected infants will die before their first birthday, and 50 percent by their second.
Goodbye Malaria is one of the many partners in Mozambique that sprays houses to protect families from contracting malaria. Spraying the walls and eaves of houses with insecticide, a technique called Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS), is an effective way to kill malarial mosquitoes. But the increased resistance of mosquitos to older insecticides and the high price of new alternatives has caused indoor spraying to fall by 40 percent over the past four years.
François Maartens of Goodbye Malaria explained the IRS operation in Boane district, saying that roughly 60% of the IRS operators are women. “They communicate better than men when they brief families about the spraying process,” he said. “There are between 300 and 400 mosquitoes trapped inside the homes before the spraying begins.” In addition to IRS, families receive bednets as another malaria prevention tool.
Unitaid has invested US$65 million to create a sustainable market for affordable new insecticides against malaria. The four-year project, being implemented by the Innovative Vector Control Consortium, aims to protect as many as 50 million people from malaria in 16 African countries. Two to three new insecticides are expected to reach the market by 2020.
The government of Mozambique and Unitaid launched an ambitious project in September 2017 to bring lifesaving anti-malarial medication to hard-to-reach pregnant women in four African countries. Its goal is to bring transformative malaria prevention care to 400,000 pregnant women and their babies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique and Nigeria.
In Mozambique, most pregnant women seek prenatal services relatively late, contributing to the low coverage of Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPTp) of malaria in pregnancy. Through the TIPTOP project, community health workers, health volunteers, traditional birth attendants and community counsellors will administer 3 doses of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine during pregnancy, increasing the number of pregnant women accessing prenatal services at the community level. A key objective of Unitaid’s US$50 million project, being implemented by Jhpiego, is to develop research and evidence to inform the World Health Organization’s policy on IPTp.
“The TIPTOP partnership is embarking on a bold project that has the potential to change the way countries across Sub-Saharan Africa prevent malaria in pregnancy,” said Dr. Leslie Mancuso, President and CEO of Jhpiego, during the launch ceremony. “The project goes beyond just what we can do today, to creating long-term, scalable, sustainable impact across a generation, saving the lives of mothers and their babies.”
