Prevention of Mother-to-Child
Transmission of HIV
What We Do › Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV
"Thanks to the training we received, my colleagues and I have changed our attitudes about proper care for HIV-positive individuals. We now realize that it is not necessary to isolate pregnant women infected with HIV and their babies in separate maternity wards. It is crucial that we provide these patients with high-quality, comprehensive clinical and support services, and advanced training is the first step toward doing this."
Tamara Dzusubalieva, president of the Kazakh Association for Sexual and Reproductive Health and director of the Almaty Women’s Wellness Center, where HIV-positive pregnant women in much of Kazakhstan are referred to for prenatal, intra-partum, and postnatal care (Almaty, Kazakhstan/Tucson, Arizona, partnership)
Mother-to-child transmission is the primary route of HIV infection among children around the globe. Without intervention, an HIV-infected mother has a more than 30 percent chance of passing the virus on to her baby during her pregnancy or birth, or via breast milk after the child is born.
Since 2000, AIHA has been training practitioners to prevent vertical transmission and helping raise public awareness—especially among vulnerable or high-risk populations—about treatment options. Our work in this arena commenced with a pilot PMTCT project in Odessa, Ukraine, which resulted in a 75 percent decrease of vertical transmission in less than two years. This project has served as a replication model for scale-up projects throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
With the launch of the HIV/AIDS Twinning Center in late 2004, AIHA is using its technical expertise in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in support of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Projects
AIHA’s efforts to improve services related to the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV are carried out through specific programmatic activities, including:
Ukraine National PMTCT Scale-up Project
Based on its highly successful pilot PMTCT project in Odessa, Ukraine, AIHA received funding from USAID to implement a national scale-up strategy targeting some of the most affected oblasts in Ukraine. In June 2005, the initial phase of the replication project was launched in Cherkassy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kiev, and Mykolayiv oblasts. In November 2005, the project was launched in the second-phase oblasts of Chernigiv, Crimea, Kherson, and Odessa. Read more...
Kazakhstan National PMTCT Scale-up Project
PMTCT has emerged as a key element of strategies to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Central Asia. In response, AIHA is collaborating with the Kazakh National AIDS Center to implement its internationally recognized PMTCT strategy that has already proven successful in other low-resource settings within WHO’s European Region. Read more...
WHO-CDC-HHS PMTCT Generic Training Package
In 2004-2005, AIHA collaborated with WHO, UNICEF, leading experts and stakeholders from countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and other strategic partners to adapt and translate the WHO/HHS/CDC PMTCT Generic Training Package. This regional effort is fostering the development of national PMTCT policies and goals, national PMTCT capacity building strategies, local pilot projects that can serve as centers of PMTCT excellence and models for replication, and training centers and programs that can provide both knowledge-based and clinical-based training. Read more...
PMTCT Surveillance Database Project
With funding from USAID, AIHA is implementing a PMTCT project in four regions of Russia: Orenburg, Samara, Saratov, and St. Petersburg. Through the project, AIHA has developed a monitoring system that includes definitions for optimal indicators related to scope and type of PMTCT interventions provided, as well as outcomes achieved by each one. We are also standardizing institutional and regional data registration through normative orders—or prikaz—on information exchange and data collection; and improving methods of data collection, monitoring, and analysis. Read more...
Regional Knowledge Hub for the Care and Treatment of HIV/AIDS in Eurasia
Since 2003, the Regional Knowledge Hub has been providing technical assistance to countries in the region as they work to address one of the fastest growing rates of new HIV infections in the world. The Knowledge Hub is a unique network of individual experts and stakeholder organizations in HIV medicine created to build the human and organizational capacity necessary to provide high-quality care to people living with HIV/AIDS in the nations of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Established by WHO and the American International Health Alliance (AIHA), the Knowledge Hub is supported by the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and other donors. Read more...
Southern Ukraine AIDS Education Center
In June 2003, AIHA and various strategic partners established the Southern Ukraine AIDS Education Center (SUAEC) as a regional PMTCT training. Located at the Odessa Oblast Clinical Hospital, SUAEC serves as a key conduit for disseminating the highly successful medical-social model of PMTCT-related care and support by AIHA and its partners in Odessa. SUAEC has been recognized by WHO and other international organizations as a center of PMTCT excellence in the region. Read more...
AIDS Training and Education Center
With support from USAID and the Russian Federation Ministry of Health and Social Development, AIHA, the St. Petersburg Medical Academy for Post Graduate Studies, and its affiliated clinical sites at the St. Petersburg AIDS Center and the Ust Izhora Clinical Center for Children and Women with HIV established the AIDS Training and Education Center (ATEC) in Saint Petersburg. ATEC represents a key step in the development of a unified framework for Russia’s national efforts to build the health system capacity necessary to provide high-quality care to people living with HIV/AIDS. Read more...
EurasiaHealth AIDS Knowledge Network
The EurasiaHealth AIDS Knowledge Network is a clearinghouse of freely available HIV/AIDS-specific resources contributed, created, and translated by a worldwide community of health professionals focusing on Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Read more...
Conferences and Workshops
XVI International AIDS Conference – Toronto, Canada (August 13-18, 2006)
AIHA One-day Twinning Seminar – Toronto, Canada (August 11, 2006)
AIHA Study Tour: Support to Youth and Families Affected by HIV/AIDS – Providence; Baltimore; Washington, DC (July 23-August 3, 2006)
PEPFAR Conference – Durban, South Africa (June 10-13, 2006)
WHO Nurses Meeting with Focus on HIV – St. Petersburg, Russia (June 1-2, 2006)
First Eastern Europe and Central Asia AIDS Conference – Moscow, Russia (May 15-17, 2006)
PMTCT Information Resources
Disseminating accurate, timely information rooted in evidence-based practices and sharing successful models and lessons learned plays an important role in AIHA’s strategy for sustainable healthcare programs. For more information on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, please visit the following links:
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