More young people are living in the world than ever before, 90% of whom reside in low and middle income countries (LMICs). To address their needs, it is critical to have sustainable youth engagement when determining policy and to advance effective implementation of youth-focused interventions. Youth Community Advisory Boards (CABs) are a sustainable mechanism to achieve this goal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Abbott RealTime HIV-1 assay is a real-time nucleic acid amplification assay available for HIV-1 viral load quantitation. The assay has a platform for automated extraction of viral RNA from plasma or dried blood spot samples, and an amplification platform with real time fluorescent detection. Overall, this study found no clinically relevant differences in viral load, if samples were extracted manually.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Variation in the risk of malaria within populations is a frequently described but poorly understood phenomenon. This heterogeneity creates opportunities for targeted interventions but only if hot spots of malaria transmission can be easily identified.
Methods: We determined spatial patterns in malaria transmission in a district in northeastern Tanzania, using malaria incidence data from a cohort study involving infants and household-level mosquito sampling data.
The performance of the Abbott m2000rt RealTime HIV-1 assay (RealTime HIV-1) with manual sample preparation was compared against the ROCHE COBAS AmpliPrep/AMPLICOR HIV-1 MONITOR Test v1.5 (CAP/CA HIV-1) using samples collected from 100 donors infected with HIV and 20 donors not infected with HIV in northern Tanzania where HIV-1 subtypes A, C, D, and their recombinant forms predominate. The RealTime HIV-1 appeared to have more within-run variability at high HIV-1 RNA concentrations, but total assay variability over the dynamic range tested was within the manufacturer's claim of <0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrop Med Int Health
December 2002
Objectives: To investigate (1) benefits due to personal protection of individual net users vs. mass killing of mosquitoes within villages as a result of widespread net usage; (2) sustainability over several years of benefits against malarial morbidity of insecticide-treated nets; (3) distribution of the benefits in different age groups of children and (4) whether, as a result of fading immunity, older age groups 'paid for' the benefits which they had enjoyed when younger.
Methods: (1) Tabulation of earlier data to compare personal and community-wide effects against mosquito vectors; (2) two cross-sectional surveys for malaria parasitaemia, malarial fever, anaemia and splenomegaly in children in eight Tanzanian villages, in which there had been community-wide use of bednets which had been annually re-treated with alphacypermethrin for 3-4 years; (3) comparison between children of different age groups and with intact, torn or no nets in these villages and in 4-6 villages without nets.