Point-of-care testing can achieve same-day diagnosis for infants and rapid ART initiation: results from government programmes across six African countries.

Introduction: Point-of-care (POC) early infant diagnosis (EID) testing has been shown to dramatically decrease turnaround times from sample collection to caregiver result receipt and time to ART initiation for HIV-positive infants compared to centralized laboratory testing. As governments in sub-Saharan Africa implement POC EID technologies, we report on the feasibility and effectiveness of POC EID testing and the impact of same-day result delivery on rapid ART initiation within national programmes across six countries.

Methods: This pre-/post-evaluation compared centralized laboratory-based (pre) with POC (post) EID testing in 52 facilities across Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal and Zimbabwe between April 2017 and October 2019 (country-dependent).

Evaluation of near point-of-care viral load implementation in public health facilities across seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Introduction: In many low- and middle-income countries, HIV viral load (VL) testing occurs at centralized laboratories and time-to-result-delivery is lengthy, preventing timely monitoring of HIV treatment adherence. Near point-of-care (POC) devices, which are placed within health facility laboratories rather than clinics themselves (i.e.

Non-inferiority trial of a pedal controlled injection device: a step toward enhancing patient safety and operator independence during neural blockade.

Background And Objectives: Limitations in manpower in health care facilities, both in civilian and military settings, can severely affect patient safety as well as overall outcomes. Regional anesthesia via neural blockade is an effective means of managing uncontrolled acute pain, which has been associated with cardiopulmonary, endocrine, immunologic, and hematologic derangement in addition to the development of potentially life-threatening coagulopathy. We have designed a remote-controlled injection device that may expedite the performance of regional nerve blocks in these situations.