The arrival of free or affordable antiretroviral medications to South Africa appears imminent in many sectors.Laboratory diagnosis and monitoring methodologies for HIV are of crucial importance in the care of these patients.Most of these are highly expensive, require significant skill, infrastructure and are laborious to perform. It is of vitalimportance to develop better methodologies that are more user friendly in the resource poor areas of the globe yetthat are proven of value in comparison to standard methodologies. The mission of this core laboratory group is toprovide state of the art diagnostics to complement the management of HIV/AIDS and to make these investigationsaffordable and accessible. In the adult population this involves increasing access to monitoring and to reduce thecost of monitoring. In the pediatric population this would include increasing the access to molecular diagnosis. Anadditional aspect would be to define diagnostic and monitoring protocols appropriate for the local setting/resourcepoor setting The role of the core laboratory group for the CIPRA grant will include the following: 1) providingroutine standardized diagnostic and monitoring investigations for HIV using existing technologies, 2) safety bloodsfor monitoring of patients on antiretroviral therapy,)evaluation of innovative assays developed within the laboratoryprojects for wider implementation, 4) infrastructures for the laboratory projects (project 5) and 5) assistance indevelopment of local laboratory capacity. The treatment project (proj ects 2 and 3) and the prevention project (VCT)(project 1) will thus provide the clinical backbone of the laboratory core and laboratory projects by providingaccurate clinical data and specimens. Core laboratory staff will also be involved in training of CIPRA staff inconjunction with the training core in 1) basic laboratory practices, 2) laboratory safety, 3) establishment of a qualitysystem, 4) techniques courses with particular emphasis on molecular techniques used in the setting of HIV and 5)interpretation of laboratory investigations. The program will be applicable to many similar settings in South Africaand throughout the developing world.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 129 publications