A pediatric HIV outbreak in Pakistan.

Background: Following reports of an outbreak of HIV infection among children in Larkana District, Pakistan, an international team investigated the extent and cause of the outbreak between April and June 2019.

Aims: To investigate the incidence of HIV among children in Larkana District, Pakistan and describe the distribution of cases by time, place and person.

Methods: Self-referred persons were tested for HIV using the national testing protocol.

Innovative blood transfusion strategies to address global blood deserts: a consensus statement from the Blood Delivery via Emerging Strategies for Emergency Remote Transfusion (Blood DESERT) Coalition.

In rural settings worldwide, many people live in effective blood deserts without access to any blood transfusion. The traditional system of blood banking is logistically complex and expensive for many resource-restricted settings and demands innovative and multidisciplinary solutions. 17 international experts in medicine, industry, and policy participated in an exploratory process with a 2-day hybrid seminar centred on three promising innovative strategies for blood transfusions in blood deserts: civilian walking blood banks, intraoperative autotransfusion, and drone-based blood delivery.

Evaluation of screening effectiveness of hepatitis B surface antigen and anti-HCV rapid test kits in Pakistan.

Objective: The current study was conducted to evaluate the performance and screening effectiveness of commercially available rapid screening kits in comparison with chemiluminescence immunoassay (CLIA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Materials And Methods: This single-center, cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Pathology and Blood Transfusion Services, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University, PIMS, Islamabad, from January to April 2019. A total of 10 commercially available immunochromatographic test (ICT) devices and one CLIA kit (LIAISON XL) were tested for their sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy using 100 positive and 100 negative samples each for HBV and HCV, respectively.