Center laments surge in pediatric HIV

.Advocates use of Artificial intelligence to close gap in Pediatric HIV case finding

The Centre for Integrated Health Programs (CHIP) has decried the rising cases of HIV infections in children in the country and stressed the need to deploy Artificial intelligence (AI) to trace and locate missing cases of children who are HIV positive and place them on treatment.

Chief Executive Officer of the center, Dr Bolanle Oyeledun who made the call at the 2023 CHIP Scientific Roundtable yesterday in Abuja, stated that though Nigeria has been successful in putting adults who are HIV positive on treatment, the children who are infected with HIV are still left behind, hence, the need to reach them with multiple layers of interventions .

She said, ” We have not ben as successful as in finding these children and putting them on treatment. Children are growing and their weights changes very often and if you don’t ensure that they get quality care and treatment as they grow, they will fall behind and become resistant to the infection”. We need find these children quickly so that they don’t die. Few years back, we have adult ARV m surge where we were able to mobilize and put a lot of adults on treatment but niw were are lagging behind in adolescent and children so we now have that surge. We need to reach them with multiple layers of intervention”.

Oyeledun noted that the organization has implemented various interventions in the areas of HIV AIDS and immunization and had tested about 1.2 million pregnant women of HIV and have found about 30,000 HIV positive and placed them on treatment.

“We have been able to prevent maternal to child transmission of HIV.. We are working with key agencies to stem the rising trend of HIV, in Nigeria., when we started in 2005 , HIV was a death sentence we have been able to use treatment to avert new infections. We are gathering data for HIV patients who are on treatment

She observed that CHIP has been are working with the government, donors and partners using new methodologies,adding that there is a lot of Artificial intelligence, machine learning and evolution in data processing to map locate new infections. .

Also speaking, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Health, Kachollom Daju Said that the Federal government wants to use data to support decision making and will improve on the quality of data through Artificial intelligence , for effective service delivery.

He noted that quality data is critical to attaining the Universal Health Coverage as it will help to identify real time where problems are and address them.