Those involved in the fight once morest HIV satisfied with the self-testing strategy
Started in 2018 in Côte d’Ivoire, in order to support the screening of people living with HIV AIDS, the “Atlas” self-screening project has come to an end. During a deliberative and closing workshop, organized on Friday April 22, 2022 in Abidjan, the national program for the fight once morest AIDS (PNLS) and its partner Solthis were unanimous in recognizing the effectiveness of this project which made it possible to reduce the detection rate considerably.
This workshop, which brought together actors in the fight once morest AIDS in Côte d’Ivoire, made it possible to validate the recommendations resulting from the Atlas experience and thus guarantee the availability of the self-test in a sustainable manner HIV which is now fully integrated into the national testing strategy.
To this end, Dr Kouamé Blaise, Head of the screening service of the National AIDS Control Program (PNLS), on behalf of the Coordinating Director Pr Ehui Eboi, affirmed that Côte d’Ivoire is committed to elimination of HIV AIDS by 2030 through UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets.
“It is obvious that the achievement of these objectives requires the identification of people who are infected with HIV. Already in 2016, we realized that the screening strategy conventional method did not reach a large number of infected people. We have therefore adopted voluntary screening as a complementary strategy in order to be able to achieve our objectives by 2030. It is in this sense that we welcomed the arrival of the Atlas project in 2018”, he explained. He said he was happy with the results obtained because it was Côte d’Ivoire that was responsible for providing the largest number of self-tests and we were able to appreciate the impact of this strategy.
He said that although the Atlas project has come to an end, the strategy will continue to be used, with the support of the Ivorian Ministry of Health, Public Hygiene and Universal Health Coverage.
For her part, Ms. Brigitte Quenum, UNAIDS Country Director explained that the The first objective of the 90-90-90 is the essential entry point to put populations in contact with care and treatment and to keep them in care. For her, in Côte d’Ivoire, we were far from achieving this objective with a rate of 58%. “In the context of an epidemic, we had to change strategy and to essential to increase the availability of screening for people living with HIV and to improve. There was a pressing need to go to hard-to-reach populations,” she said. And to add that self-testing is an additional strategy, a guarantee of reliability and confidentiality. She congratulated all the actors who made the project a success.
Note that the Atlas project has provided, since 2019, 203,407 self-testing kits to vulnerable populations in Côte d’Ivoire. and that it made it possible to maintain access to knowledge of one’s serological status in 2020, during the first wave of Covid 19. It was set up with more than 30 partners in 3 countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal) and 13 regions covered.
Solange ARALAMON