Caritas Nigeria, in a bid to strengthen her working relationship with the Community Base Organizations (CBOs), and to substain her continued support to promoting good health among Nigerians, held an engagement meeting on the 21st of June 2022 with the Community Base Organization at the Imo state office. The aim…
of the meeting was to review data reported by the Community Base organizations (CBOs), and the capacity building in order to track their efforts and ensure that recency test is done on every patient identified as positive between the past 12 months approximately while long term recency is more than 12 months approximately, and the eligible criteria which is; adults and young persons of 15 years and above who have never been diagnosed with HIV before, and or never taken HIV Anti Retroverial Therapy (ART)but are willing to undergo the procedure, do not opt out.
Dr. Olarewaju Jonathan explained that the common diseases responsible for Advanced HIV Disease (AHD) are Tuberculosis (TB), and Cryptococcal Meningitis. He stated the need for the CBOs to key into this process and commence testing of their clients who tested positive for HIV above 5 years of age, and ART-naïve, for Cluster of Differentiation (CD4)-cell count, which if less than 200 cells/µl, TB LF-LAM and CrAg tests should be done. He also said that CBOs should ensure proper and complete documentation of all forms and registers for each client, early turn in of Viral Load (VL) samples, screen all clients for TB at every clinic visit or at every contact and then, early request for consumables-RTKs, Asante kits, forms, registers, VL consumables ecetra. And such client should be referred to the facility if positive for Tuberculosis Lateral Flow Liboarabinomanam, (TB LF-LAM), and/or Cryptococcal Antigen (CrAg) tests.
Mr. Norbert Ogar on his part emphasised the Orphans and Vulnerable children (OVC) treatment and collaboration to foster enrollment of pediatric and adolescent eligible for Orphans nand Vulnerable Children (OVC) service in to the OVC program and the need to enrol all positive identified children in line with PEPFAR mandate.
At the end of the meeting, the State Team Lead (STL) Dr. Abe Oluwaseun thanked all participants for their commitment to work and emphasized on the need to strengthen the point of interface with orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) in the area of case identification for clients between 0-17 years, note gaps, and take corrective actions to change the narrative.
Report and pictures courtesy of Joy Chinwendu Onuoha from Imo state.
