ZIMBABWE has to date received at least 10 SAMBA machines meant for early diagnosis of HIV in infants, a move set to speed up detection of HIV in new born babies and children.
By Michael Gwarisa
The SAMBA HIV testing technology comes at a time Zimbabwe is making inroads towards eliminating mother to child transmission of HIV and the new technology will aid in detecting the virus early making it easy to initiate the young ones on anti-retro viral medicines.
Officiating at the Handover Ceremony of 10 SAMBA machines to the ministry of health by Diagnostics for the Real World (DRW), First Lady, Amai Auxillia Mnangagwa said the machines would go a long way in ensuring Zimbabwe achieves its goals of eradicating HIV in children by identifying and availing treatment early to infants.
“Zimbabwe has an estimated 1.3 million people living with HIV and about 5.5 percent are reported to be children under the age of 15 years, while women constitute 59 percent.
“It gives me great pleasure to embark on initiatives that will improve the lives and livelihoods of the people of Zimbabwe. I say this with reference to those who are under saved and those in need, the marginalised and those at high risk such as women and children, people with disability adolescent girls and those who are living with HIV and AIDS,” said Amai Mnangagwa.
She added that although poverty remains a challenge that has stalled efforts in combating HIV and AIDS, the government of Zimbabwe was committed to ending HIV prevention by scaling HIV treatment, care and prevention services.
“To all people living with HIV, service provision begins with HIV testing and knowing that one is HIV positive even for children. Early infant diagnosis in infants is lifesaving as without any anti-retroviral treatment, 30 percent of HIV positive children will be dead by age one year rising to 50 percent by the second birthday if no treatment is initiated.
“Zimbabwe has scaled up efforts in the prevention of Mother To Child Transmission (MTCT) on HIV PMTCT program, posting impressive results which has seen the rate of MTCT decline from 21 percent in 2010, to 6.74 percent in 2017,” she said.
Before the advent of SAMBA technology in Zimbabwe, health institutions in marginalised rural communities would send their blood samples to centralised laboratories where it could take up to three months before results were returned.
Health and Child Care Minister, Dr Obadiah Moyo welcomed the new development and called on efforts to increase HIV testing for adult males countrywide.
“Zimbabwe is one of the top five countries that have been hit by the HIV and AIDS epidemic. This has had multi sectorial impact to all levels of society and has left many families without parents and socio-economic support being deprived
“Before in Zimbabwe, we initially seen a rise in incidence among the economically productive age groups and without treatment, many families lost their loved ones bread winners and young children. With the introduction of treatment, we saw a reverse in this trend, we still lag behind in terms of testing among adults males and we have seen that adolescent girls and young women are at risk more than any demographic age group” said Dr Moyo.
He added that SAMBA had come at the right and could be Zimbabwe’s gateway increasing treatment of HIV among infants and children.
[pullquote]“With babies, we recommend testing at six weeks of age and we are in the process of working out modalities to see if we can test babies at birth to see if they are HIV positive or not. This is what we call early Infant Diagnosis (EID).[/pullquote]
“The introduction of point of care technologies such as SAMBA is an immediate game changer for people living with HIV and this has boosted the moral of healthcare workers by making it possible to get HIV and viral load results the same day and to act accordingly on the day of testing,” added Dr Moyo.
Meanwhile, founder and Chief Executive officer for DRW, Professor Helen Lee said, “Zimbabwe was among the first countries in the world to use Samba II point-of-care technology for viral load tests and early infant diagnosis of HIV.”
A number of SAMBA have already been deployed to other health institutions around the country in parts such as Mnene in Mberengwa, Mt Darwin among others. These machines are meant to offer testing services to adults and adolescents while the new consignment of 10 will go towards early infant diagnosis.
